GEORGIE CLARK INTERVIEW
This is an interview with Georgie Clark being conducted at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on November 6, 1991 at about 2:20 p.m. I'm Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona University, and we're going to do a life history with Georgie. We'll start with childhood, which seems like a logical beginning.
Underhill: You were born in Chicago on November 13, 1910?
Clark: Right.
Underhill: And do you have earliest memories? Do you remember your early childhood?
Clark: No, I don't have a lot of memories. Oddly enough, of the early childhood, I don't have a whole lot of memories. I had a terrific mother and I evidently didn't have any complaints from my mother, so I just went along in the middle of everything. But strangely enough, I don't have a lot of memories of the early childhood.
Underhill: What kind of person was your. . . .
Clark: The most I have is at home, because in those days, was in Depression days and all, and we were real poor. And so I got a little different start, was all, because my mother.-I didn't have a dad, he just disappeared.-my mother never talked agin [ed: against] him, I just didn't have one. But she always said, "Well, you're on the bottom and everything has to be up." So no crying, because we never did cry, "because," she said, "you'd be crying your life away, because you usually cry for yourself." So that was one thing I remembered, and it's true if you think about it. If you cry for most things, you're only crying for you, so therefore, I never did cry in my life, but it helped me a lot on a lot of things, because then you just don't do it. And the other thing she taught was privacy, because we had one big room, but she was real handy and she set up canvas and made like little self-territories.-then you had a pad on the floor and then just hangers enough for what few clothes you had. And then this pad was yours, and nobody.-not even her.-ever came in it. And so then we never argued either.-she wouldn't stand it. "If you can't be pleasant to one another, it's all we have, why, just go to your pad." And she never touched us, but boy, we knew enough that we were either pleasant or we went to the pad. And as a result, my brother and sister and I never had a word in our life. So I did have a little different start than most people. She didn't send us to church, because her dad had been.-she said "a hypocrite".-had been real heavy on it, so she decided she would let us grow into what we wanted to, and she always talked of one old saying, which still is with me, as you can see, "Do as you be done by." And boy, it works! (laughs) Because if I don't do anything to you I don't want, you won't do anything in life. So that's the only main thing I remembered, was that part of my upbringing, that served me so well, clear to even yet.
Underhill: Did you have something in particular you wanted to be when you grew up?
Clark: I always liked water, but I think this was natural, because living right close to Lake Michigan.-I lived on the near north side.-the only thing you could do when you were poor, is in little gangs you went and swam in Lake Michigan. And you didn't use to have any sand beaches or nothing.-everything was off the rocks. These sand beaches, they were all artificial. A lot of people don't know that to this day, that they're artificial beaches. You used to have to go off the rocks, so you had to get fairly good at swimming. And you used to have a lot of competition between you on who was the best as far as swimming went. So it was kind of natural I'd like water, because it's all I knew. When I even came to California, I was looking for water. And then I found, because I settled in L.A., that the water was miles away.-the ocean. I had thought it'd be like living two blocks away from Lake Michigan, that I could (laughs) just walk to it. (laughs) So I was disappointed at this.
Underhill: Did you have any role models.-heroes or heroines.-when you were growing up?
Clark: No, I didn't, oddly enough, except my mother. I thought she was right, and we all did, for some reason. She was so great that we wanted to please her. Mainly I just thought whatever she did was right. And she didn't ever "down" us. She always said, "Anything you're thinking, do go for it." And believe it or not, when I swam the Grand Canyon and I told her about it, I thought I could swim it.-you know, that Powell had come down, they said nobody come since.-she said, "Oh, if you think you can do it, go for it!" So, see, I always had her backing. The family backed one another. They didn't down you and razz you and say, "You're crazy!" Whatever you wanted to do, why, "go for it!" And that was a big help. You didn't have nobody downing you.
Underhill: What traits would you say you inherited from your mother?
Clark: Well, my mother laughed, because she said, "Well, Dad was from France," he was French, but she's Irish and English. So she said, "That just makes you an alley cat. But remember, alley cats are tough!" (laughs) And she said, "You did inherit terrific health." Because both of them, she said, "Your dad had terrific health," and she sure had health to the very last. She could work clear up. So she had good eyes too.-her own eyes and teeth. So then I figured I would have them, because she had them.
Underhill: Did you inherit any traits from your father that you were ever told about?
Clark: I don't know if I did or not. She didn't say anything agin him, for him, or otherwise. She just said merely, he was sort of a party fellow who should have never been married, and that was all. She didn't talk agin anything. She was upbeat. If you didn't have anything good to say about anything, not to say it. So we had a terrific beginning in that way, that we just didn't have this downbeat or complaining.-we just didn't do it, no matter how rough things were. And at that time, you never knew where your next meal was coming from, because then, women couldn't get jobs. And she hand-ironed in a laundry to raise the three of us.
Underhill: When you were young, did you feel that you were deprived of things, or you had a happy childhood?
Clark: Oh, we seemed to go along beautiful. And our family was so close, we were so tight-knit. And then my sister and I remained tight-knit, and my brother too, all our life. Wherever one went, the other one went. And we were always so tight, and always got along, that it was a little different, you see, otherwise.
Underhill: Your sister Marie seems to have a little different personality. Is your brother different also from both of you?
Clark: Well, my sister was terrific. She had good health, but she just wasn't to the ruggedness like I was. In so many words, I went out for everything.-like she didn't go for the swim[ming] or any of that. And she was always a very high I.Q. to begin with. She had a scholarship to go to college and everything. Teachers offered to help her because she had this very high. . . . And she studied all the time. And we used to call her "the brains," because she was so smart. And she didn't want to be called "the brains," and she'd say, "Well, any one of you could pass your grades just as good if you'd study, but neither one of you ever study." Which Mom said we didn't, she said we just slid through and got medium grades and had no problem. But we didn't ever bring a book home, whereas my sister studied all the time. And she was the smart one, to begin with.
Underhill: Did you like school? Or do you remember your school years at all?
Clark: Somehow I don't remember much about the school years. And I've always marveled at this, as to why. But Mother just said I seemed to go along fine, no problems. But she said I was pretty positive of myself and always did what I wanted anyhow, so it wouldn't have mattered to me, if others approved or didn't, because I.-having to take care of myself from an early age of about four, your hair and everything, so then I didn't want long hair, because I thought it was a pain, you had to spend too much time on it. And even then, this was when little girls all had long hair, and I had mine cut. And she said it must not have bothered me if they teased me about looking like a boy, because I still cut it. (laughs) So she said evidently I just wasn't bothered.
Underhill: How did you come to swim in Lake Michigan? How did you learn to swim?
Clark: Oh, by yourself. Everything then, nobody . . . except watching other kids and all that.
Underhill: Did you swim year-round in Lake Michigan, or not in the winter?
Clark: Later on I did.-they swam in the winter. We didn't have any big clubs like they later had, because the first Polar Bear Club started in Chicago. We didn't have that, because they were right close to a hotel, then they had put sand beaches down and the people that ran the hotel.-because we had to walk home to change our clothes. But they were just a rugged little group that formed our own little.-we didn't call it "polar bear" then, but we just went in the winter. Because we didn't have that then, we just went in the winter on our own, though.
Underhill: Can you tell us what happened after high school? You went to Florida and then New York City?
Clark: Oh, well I had wanted to get a change, because I thought, "Well, there must. . . ." You know, I'd never been out of Chicago. I was just in Chicago, period. So I thought, well, I would try to go somewhere else. But I made an error, not realizing that New York was even bigger. I just thought, "Well, it'll be a change." And so then I got a bus, went to New York. Then I got a job. I had trained in order to do other things. I had worked in lots of nightclubs, because there was no age barrier there. So then I was a cigarette girl and I was real young and I liked to get money when I went to school, because there wasn't an age barrier or anything. Then I went and I learned.-you probably don't know what a "comp" is [comptometer], but it's all figures, and it's before a computer. It dealt with figures only. Only there was no tapes or nothing. And so I learned to do that real good, and that was what they used all the time in big companies before the event of the computers. And then by changing jobs a lot.-because I was always restless, that I was.-then I was real good at it. You used to have to pass tests, both in written and on the machine. And I could pass them like nothing. So I got in Radio City real quick and worked on a comp operator there. So that was all right, because I was lucky to work then, because the Depression, remember. But that's what caused my biking, because then I walked up to Central Park. Of course I was young at that time, and I leaned over the fence and watched the seven-day bike riders. They used to have them that rode in the bowls for money and they was real popular. And I looked, I had never.-couldn't afford a bike, never been on one. And so they come over, "Want to ride?" And I said, "Well, I never been on a bike in my life. I'd like to, but I don't know anything about it." "Well, we'll teach you." So then they met me and took me over to where they had truck stops, and they were always down.-they're down real hard, and then up at that point. So then they put me on this racer bike and there are no brakes on it, you know. Your feet were tied in tight, and then they give you a shove. Well, down went fine, but I'd always crash and it was all brick coming up. I was so black and blue! (laughs) But I did learn to balance. And so then we talked and they said I came to the wrong place, you know. I wanted something different than this big city life, because that's all I know. They said, "Why didn't you go to California?" And I said, "Ha! Big deal! Now how do I get there in Depression?" And I had one week's salary coming in and I said, "Be impossible." And they said, "Oh, not with you," they said. "You're pretty tough, we've been watching you." And they said, "You can take it and you can eat at farmhouses on the way out and you can ride out there and you can average at least a hundred miles a day the way you are when you get used to it. And you'll make it out there." And I said, "Well, great, but I don't have a bike." "We'll give you one." "Well," I said, "I need another one, because," I said, "my brother is here." And at that time, I was actually married and he couldn't get work, but you didn't dare say you're married then, or you couldn't get a job, because women that were married then didn't get a job, because the Depression in that day. So then I always called him "brother." So anyhow, then he said, "We'll give you two of the training bikes." "Okay." So then I went home with two bikes to the tenement home, I say, but anyhow, this tenement place, and I said, "We, when I get my salary this Friday, are going to ride to California." "What?!" And I said, "At least, I am, and you can't stay here when you're not working."
Underhill: And this was Harold? That was your husband?
Clark: So that's what we started on then. I had that one week's little salary and we started out of New York on those bikes. And we didn't have anything like sleeping bags or nothing. We just had to sleep in a culvert or whatever you had. And we didn't carry anything, because we didn't have anything to amount to anything. We sent what few clothes we had, just so that we could pick them up in California, sure we was going to get there, and started out. And then we had brick for five hundred miles, clear into the.-I forget what hills you call those.-terrible five hundred miles of it. And then I found my legs were in good condition from so many stair climbing, but sitting down on that little hard seat.-boy! I mean, the second and third day I rode standing up (laughs) until I got used to sitting down. And then I was okay then.-I started to gain what strength you need, because no gears or nothing, remember. And so I started gaining. Then the roads weren't wide, so then on Sundays it was kind of bad. And when I got out West, and as we kept coming, and we rode.-it got to so we could ride everything, and we did stop at farmhouses. And then you didn't have to be personally afraid. People weren't going to hit you in the head because you had lots of company.-everybody was in Depression. That was 1936 and everybody was there.-practically everybody. And so you didn't fear for your life. Like now, you couldn't do this too easy. But then you could do it and people helped you if you went and offered to work or to pay.-you know, whatever they would give you in a farmhouse.-you could do it. And then you just stopped and bathed in any creeks you saw or anything. And I had never seen anything like a desert or nothing. And I come over through Flagstaff, believe it or not. And the old Highway 66 for a while and then down through there. And then I went the old Needles Grade, because that's the only road there was. And when I got in Flag[staff] though, I liked to froze.-it was in August, but to me it was real cold somehow, that air. Then we got down towards San Berdino [ed: San Bernardino] and then they had a big sign "Grape Pickers Wanted," and I had never got the grapes I wanted, because they were expensive, anywhere I'd ever been, so I said, "Oh, good, let's go up and tell them we're experienced." So we went up, "Experienced?" "Oh, yes!" And we were tanned.-everybody out there was Mexicans working. And we said, "Oh, sure," you know. They didn't ask nothing. And so they throw us this sharp blade.-it's a handle and this curved blade, you know. And I'm looking at it, and they pay you so much a box. So we go out and we just watched the other Mexicans, how they were doing it. (laughs) And all that kind of thing. Make it more interesting, I got to racing him.-I could do more than he could. And then I shouldn't have did it, but I put some leaves in the bottom of mine to lift them up, so I would win! Then when I first went out there, the only thing they give you is wine.-you had to buy your own lunch. So when I had looked, why, boy, they'd drink a glass of wine like this, and I thought, "Gee, how disgusting!" I'd watched you in nightclub just sipping, you know. But after I worked out there a couple of days I could do that too! (laughs) So I didn't judge anybody from there on, until you tried it. And then it wasn't coming out, I think we was practically eating more than we was making. So I said, "I don't think this is going to come out, we'd better move on." So then we did.
Underhill: How did you cross the desert?
Clark: Yeah, we went on the desert. We didn't have a spare tire. Ignorance is bliss sometimes. We just didn't know anything. We didn't have enough water even! We'd never seen anything like that. Remember, I was strictly been in the big town.-and there was Chicago, and then what little I was in New York. And I had never been out. A vacant lot to me looked like the country, you know, because I just didn't see them. And so I didn't know. I just went. We just went. And we were lucky, because then there was only the Indians out there. There wasn't the stops you get now in the desert. And that was that old grade through Needles. It was something! Going up through there, I don't know how many have ever been on it now, but that is really something. And I'd never seen a desert. Somehow luck was just with us, because we just survived, you know. And then of course, little or no food because there was no rest stop and we hadn't carried anything with us, or water either.
Underhill: How did your husband do on the trip? Did he complain a lot?
Clark: Well, he was strong. No, he was very strong, very strong-legged and all, so he was real good when it come to anything that way physically. He just was that way and young at the time and had a very good appearance, even for that time, because he was real clean-looking and all, so his appearance was a help, actually, because he just had that "clean" look to him. No, he did real fine. Anything like that didn't bother him at all. So it was real good. He took it fine when he was out. At first he didn't think.-you know, he just thought, "Boy, you've never rode." He had rode a little, but I had never rode. So he didn't know how I was going to make it, because of having never rode, you know. But you just get used to it. When I see now these twenty-two gears on a bike (laughs) you can imagine how I'm looking at them. Twenty-two gears! Because you never heard such a thing now. Then we had down to our last quarter, and we tossed it to see if we would try to get to San Frisco [ed: San Francisco] or to Los Angeles. And it was Los Angeles. So then we spent that last quarter for a waffle between us.-you'd get one for a quarter then. So then we went into L.A. and then we picked up our clothes, because they'd been paid for to get there. Then I always had this diamond.-and believe it or not, the same one was in a ring, and his mother had give it to me early, and it's only a half-carat, but it's a good one. And then you could pawn it, even then, for seventy-five dollars, which then was pretty good money, I mean, to make you last. So the first thing I did when I got there was go to a pawnshop and pawn it. And then I knew I could get.-I could always work somehow, even in Depression. I could get work because I'd do anything I could do, and I am a worker and I always have been a worker, even to this day, whatever it is. And so I'll take anything.-it doesn't have to be one thing, until I can get another. So I did get work right away. So then I was looking for water, however, because of course we were so far from the water. But we had to ride the bikes to water if we were going to get to the water. (laughs) All the way to Venice, which is a little ways out from where we were in L.A.
Underhill: And when was your daughter born?
Clark: In 1929.
Underhill: So she was born in Chicago then?
Clark: Uh-huh.
Underhill: And where did the name Sommona come from? I've wondered about that.
Clark: Well, Sommona Rose.-we lived in the midst of a lot of French in Chicago. Then my maiden name was DeRoss, which I went by a lot, yet, when I was working.-because then you didn't have, at that time.-Social Security was coming out, but I didn't have that yet. It wasn't.-everybody didn't pick it up. So I used to use the single name a lot, since I passed as a single. And Sommona..I thought, well, it was pretty, you know, if she wanted to use Clark. But that Sommona Rose.-I just always thought it was a beautiful name. So I just automatically named her. But then of course she was so blonde, she was taffy-colored and blue eyes. And then later I said, "Sommona, that don't match you. We can change your name if you want." But she liked that name so well she didn't want to change it. But anybody from that name would think they was going to see somebody dark, and here (laughs) was a taffy-colored blonde, you know. (laughs) And so she didn't want to change it. And of course she was young with me, so we run together so much. And she was real strong. She could do everything, six years old on up, why, we were like peas in a pod. So then California we did a lot of skiing and mountain climbing and what-have-you.
Underhill: Did she have some of the same characteristics that you do?
Clark: She had everything, just exact. And for all he [Harold] had the strength, he wasn't as much that way. So we simply agreed to disagree, and so then we went our separate ways after we were out there. And of course, probably because I was with her so much and he didn't care for all that stuff. We were just that way and he wasn't.
Underhill: So in the late thirties, then, up until World War II what did you do to support yourself in Los Angeles?
Clark: I did different things: I got into office work again on comp work. In fact, I got on at Sears and they took all the figures there to send into Chicago, for the sales every day. The only thing I didn't like was some fellow standing over you, waiting on you to give him the figures. And there's no tape on this. If you make error, why, it's just bad. (laughs) Because, you know, just run your fingers like this, you could. I used to tell him, "If you would just go sit down, I could do a lot better than standing on my shoulder." (laughs) We got along good, because I didn't have much trouble. Oddly enough, I didn't have much trouble, when it come to work.
Underhill: And how did you become interested or get involved with the Ferry Command in World War II?
Clark: Oh, I worked at different things. As I said, I was always restless. For some reason, I could work and yet I always was changing jobs. I was plain restless. That was the only bad thing I did, is, I didn't stay at jobs. As soon as I could turn around, I was looking for something, I didn't know what, but I was looking. (laughs) Just looking. And I come back to Chicago once in 1938 and worked and then went back again. And then was out there. And then I heard about the Ferry Command. So that sounded real interesting. My mother said, "Go for it." And she said, "Marie and I will take care of Sommona. And go for it, by all means, because you'll never get to fly otherwise." So see, again, it was their help. So then I saved enough money. You had to have thirty-five hours, then, to put in your application. So I went out.-the War was on.-I went out to Quartzsite, which was nothing then.-now they have Pow-Wows, they have a lot of people there, but there was nothing then. And then they had one little store and they had the flying out there, because you couldn't fly too close into a town. And they just had these little old Cubs and it was real hot. I went in August because it was real cheap then, because a lot didn't want to go in August because you couldn't do any precision flying. About all you could do when you got up there was spin. They taught spins then. And so that was what I did, mostly, was spins, once you got up there, because you couldn't do anything else. And these Cub planes.-and I didn't know the difference.-again, ignorance is bliss.-I didn't know the difference, and gee, the oil would spill on the windshield and all this kind of thing. You'd have to look out the side of these little Cubs and then the altimeter didn't work and you'd level off with a five hundred foot mountain. I didn't know any better! And so I thought that's the way it was. (laughs) So then I got my thirty-five hours and then my daughter was so well-liked out there.-she was about thirteen, and I took her with me, it wasn't during school. She got to go up and down between everybody, so she could really land better than I could. And then being young, she just got everything like nothing. So then when I soloed, they didn't pay no attention to anything then, so I went up once and landed and then she come running out and crawled in and I let her do the other two! (laughs) And so then I got into the Ferry Command. I wasn't sure, because thirty-five was the age limit, and I was thirty-four. And I was just holding my breath, and then I had to put down, because they check you to a "fair thee well" of course, because you're going into flying. Even then, you really got a check. So I knew I had to put down "daughter," and everything else.-"divorced" and what-have-you. And I thought, "Oh boy, I'll probably will never (laughs) get in." But I did! Much to my surprise, too. And so I was thrilled to death then. And I got in, but I got in so late that I got to training, but I didn't get to work at it. They finished you up, I got the training, but I didn't get to work. And I had just passed it, I was going to get to go on the helicopters.-which I somehow wanted the helicopters right away. So I never got to helicopters. That's one thing I didn't get that I wanted in my life badly, was flying the helicopters. Even today, when I fly helicopters quite a bit in the canyon, going out at Whitmore [Mile 188], why, I still would like to fly a helicopter. (laughs) Because I never did get it and I was so close, but so far. And so that was the way on that one. But I didn't get to make use of this flying. They had a little club for a while called "The Feefanola [phonetic spelling] Club," but it was mostly wealthy women. And if I went in, I was just chiselling on them and they took me because I could fly so good, because they used to fly in pairs, and they would have a lot of games and stuff and I was good to be on their team, because I could fly good. But yet I was the one who didn't have anything, so I dropped out because I thought, "This is no good, for me being the only one that doesn't have anything. It's just no good at all." So I told them I just felt that way, that I couldn't afford, you know, what they had, or nothing. So I dropped through on that then. And then they didn't have little planes anywhere. They didn't have them any place, so that you couldn't keep up with it. It had been too expensive, and they didn't have like around here.-everywhere is planes.-but not then! (chuckles) You didn't see them. So I dropped out. Then I found various work again. And as I said, but still was looking for something. Then even more-so now, because a regular job after flying was pretty boring. So I'm still looking, and I don't know what for. Then my daughter and I was out biking when it ended, and I came back and then that's when she got killed. We were out biking out on 101, because we rode to Santa Barbara one day and back the next when I was off work, and we got hit by a drunk driver. He was in uniform. He slowed and I yelled.-I had run after the car and I said, "Well, she's hurt. Will you wait and we'll get her to a hospital?" Because I wasn't hurt. But she was singing a song and it quit right there. And I was afraid she was dead. But anyhow, I wanted to get her to a hospital. So then I started back. He said, "Yes." And I could see he'd been drinking, and somehow I memorized his number. But I got back and then he just took off. So anyhow then, then I caught.-another fellow come up in a Jeep, and I told him the number of the car, but it took off. I said, "Because I'm going to forget it, I'm afraid, if I try to think it much longer," because I knew she was dead. So then he took over, called the morgue, because there was no use to call anything different. So she was still so warm I couldn't believe she was dead. I had them check to be sure, and just came back. But then at that time, when the trial come up, because everything was in for the poor person going overseas, they felt sorry, and I said, "Oh, well," you know, "forget it, then." Because it wouldn't bring her back anyway, and all it got me with that one was what my mother had taught me, and still was living and taught me, is that you cry for yourself, because she's out of it. The song quit in the middle, she doesn't know anything. But you, of course, will always miss her. So, see, the training come in very good. And of course I had the job to call them [her family] and tell them. And remember, she was as close to them as she was to me, really, because they had had her all the time when I went to Ferry [Command] and all this stuff. So then she was so close and so well loved, so that that part was real hard, and hard for me, because I'd had her companionship so long. But that was when, then, I found the Colorado River. It was afterwards a friend of mine took me on Lake Mead and I come up and I looked up the Canyon and wanted to know what's up there, because a whole lot of driftwood [was] coming down. He [Harry Aleson] said, "Oh, nobody ever runs that, it's the Colorado River, except," he said, "I read the Powell book, the Day of Powell." And I said, "Well, somebody run it, it can be run for sure." And he said, "Well, that was the way it was." So then he hiked and everything, so I thought, "Hmm," because I thought about, figuring I'm sure I can swim anything. So I said to him, "Let's go up and hike into various parts of that canyon and with a life preserver, I'm sure that I can make it." So I talked him into it finally.
Underhill: And this was Harry Aleson?
Clark: Uh-huh. And I talked him into it, I have to admit. So then we hiked in. Then we went in [at Parashant Wash], but we got separated right off the bat. And then the water, oddly enough, took us by where we could grab our hands again, because then that was when I learned.-I didn't know anything about the river, remember. I didn't know backwater from nothing. But I learned fast, because I had to. And so then that's when we got a wrist lock so we could hang on to one another. And then in the old days, you had terrific whirlpools, and the very first night, we got in a whirlpool. It took us down the third time, and then your breathing is getting short and then we come up. It threw us out of the whirlpool. So then it was close-in to a narrow break-down and I grabbed a rock and it took us quite a while to get up because you lose your strength. But we finally did get up. And then of course you're cold all night because you just sit there in the life preserver because you don't dare take it off, because it was on such a little narrow break-down. And then all we had taken had been dehydrated soup and candy and coffee. The first coffee came out in little bitty cans, dehydrated. And we would dump the can and pick up water and there'd be lots of wood from seeing it from the bottom all that driftwood.-there'd be lots of wood.-but there was no wood where we was. The water was up.-it was, I guess, now we're guessing, but we think seventy thousand.-and there was no driftwood up where I was. The river was full of it, but you can't use wet driftwood. [END TAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]
Clark: So then we couldn't make it far. And you can't eat dehydrated soup. That's impossible! So then all we had was the candy, which is all right, because I had never eat that much, so that didn't bother me. And Harry had been gassed in the war [WWI?] and he didn't eat very much. So for us it wasn't as bad as it sounds, because we weren't used to a whole lot.
Underhill: And this was 1945, the summer of 1945?
Clark: In 1945, uh-huh. And then I got him to go in 1946 to go up the Canyon further. And then he about drowned. I didn't somehow, but he did. Well, he couldn't take the cold.-the cold just got to him. We didn't use anything, remember, and that was snow water coming down real fast. And he just froze and shook so bad and his teeth chattered. I was cold, but not like him, because he had been gassed in World War I. And so then he said, "Don't you ever say 'swim' to me again, because I'm not going! I'm going to shoot you if you mention it!" And I said, "Don't worry, I won't." Because he come so close, that I didn't want to be responsible. And then unknown to anybody that I did go up and then knew I could go into Phantom and that I did go down. There was nobody around at that time but myself.-just to get in that much. But then I had no problem but myself. Because remember, I was born on swimming. And Lake Michigan is rough, if you don't know it. It's wild rough and it comes out way over the Outer Drive. And a lot of times the water there is that rough.-it comes up over their beaches and clear over their outer drives.
Underhill: Do you think that going to the Colorado River helped you cope with your daughter's death?
Clark: Oh, naturally. You learn that river.-I mean, boy, you knew it. When you do a thing like that, in those days, you sure knew it. So then when you got. . . . Then I had a ten-man boat and come down, the first thing I got was a surplus boat like the one you see. And boy, I thought I had the Queen Mary under me, because I'd never had all that air before. (laughs) So when anybody said, "aren't you afraid I had this one fella," and I said, "Are you kidding?" You know, with all this air under me, if I hang onto the boat at all, why man, I've got plenty. I got one fellow to go with me, called Elgin Pierce [in 1952]. He passed away last year, as it so happens. I could send you a picture, too, because he's the first fellow that went through this in an aluminum boat. I still have a picture of that, a couple of extra. I'll send that to you. I'll try to write it down and try to remember to send it to you. Because then he went down with me. But I wasn't inclined to portage after swimming. I just said, "Oh, you know, if you hang on you upset" because we had practiced getting the ten-man over, because two people can do when you don't have much luggage.-you can get it back over in the calm water and just go ahead. And I said, "Well, it'll just be simpler to, you know, to go ahead and let it upset and hang on and then crawl back, get it over and crawl in it." But I had forgot he wasn't that good a swimmer and wasn't that good at it. So he was having a hard time (laughs) and he got separated from me in one spot and then did get up. But he said nevermore on that one again.
Underhill: Were you afraid at all on that first swim with Harry?
Clark: No, strangely enough, being born, somehow like I was, in Chicago I was a fatalist. And that again was my mother.-she was a fatalist, because she definitely thinks when your time comes, that's it, whether you're at home, going down the stairs.-anything. You know, because so many get killed in those big towns all the time in tenement districts anyhow that you can get killed there as well as anywhere. And so that as a result I was just a fatalist. You know, if you believe in yourself and you know what you can do and can't.-I was not foolhardy. I mean, in so many words, I wasn't going to commit suicide, but I just believed I could do anything enough. I figured I can hike out of the Canyon, because then I had really good legs, and I can hike out if I have to, anywhere I'm sure. I felt positive on my swimming. Remember, I had swam all my life at that time. And I felt very positive about the swimming, that I could hold for an awful long time. If you didn't, why, it was supposed to be your time.
Underhill: Are you afraid of anything?
Clark: Yes, when somebody else drives me on a freeway! (laughs) I was asked that same question by Art Linkletter. I was on his program and he said, "Aren't you afraid of anything?" And I said, "Oh, you bet! I'm afraid of anybody driving me on the freeway.-particularly if they want to give me a thrill, because," I said, "I don't want accidents which cripple you up. I am afraid, I don't want [to be] crippled. I don't mind death, because the way I think that is, is instant, or at least close to instant, and you're out of it. But I don't want crippled, because of the way I like to do things, crippled I don't want.-under no condition. Because of the way I'm set up and all, why, I wouldn't go for it." So I said, "That's something I just don't want." So I said, "Anything where people drive crazy, I'd rather drive my own car." Which is true, still even today, almost. On a freeway, I prefer to drive myself. (laughs) I have confidence in me. And then I always have a lucky star. And I always thought, being a fatalist, that I did have so much luck, too. For some reason, I just seemed to have luck. My daughter just didn't have it, see. When she was hit on the bike, she let go of the handle bars, and the fellow had a rear view mirror on each side. She was on the inside, and normally this would be safe, but she hit the rear view mirror at the base of the brain.-it killed her instantly. And normally I'd have been the one which would have got hooked by a car, you know, but he drove so far over and it hooked her. And I got hit on the front, but all I got was a stiff back out of it, because I got right up and everything. The wheels were locked together. And so I just seemed to be. . . . I have all my life just seemed to be, have a lucky star. My mother and sister always said that. And when my brother went on the Grand, he went about three times, but he had trouble with single boats then, and he upset and he got tangled in some rope and took some water and everything. And he said, "I'm going to hike in the Canyon, but," he said "I'm not going to come down the Canyon too much in these boats," he said. "You won't drown, but I will." He said, "You're half fish and I don't have your lucky star." He said, "You just have luck on everything." But I always have had. I've been in quite a lot of car accidents with other people, which I didn't want to be but was, where they'd get hurt seriously and somehow I only come out with something on my forehead. Somehow I'd always hit the windshield.-in the old days, of course, they cracked. And then I cut my forehead and face, which was bad because I had so many scars for a while I looked like Scarface Al! (laughs) I had scars all over me. But that was all, it seemed like.
Underhill: Did you have close calls early on when you were doing this by yourself?
Clark: In the Canyon?
Underhill: yes.
Clark: Not that it seemed to me. I didn't think they were, because of course I'm used to water and these single boats and being in the water didn't mean anything to me. As far as I was concerned, being in the water didn't mean anything, because I was used to that.
Underhill: Can you tell us then, you began running the river with a ten-man raft and then you started working on the idea for the "G-boat"?
Clark: Yeah, I rowed the ten-man raft for up until 1955. Then I couldn't get people, and I had a single, then I put the three together. But when I put three of them together, they could run so good, because on those little ten-man like that one of the surplus, one would come on top of the other one. But the people would only put their feet down, shove it back over, and no danger at all to them. And it just worked so good and they were so tough that nothing seemed to happen. And I used those on all my exploratory trips: In Mexico I had the dam turn loose on me, and boy, you got turned every way but right-side up. Even in those, you were just everyway. And if I'd had any boat but those surplus, I'm sure that the other people.-again, I would say "not me".-but I would say that the others would have be on it, because you're not that used to water, because it was something when that dam turned loose right that close on top of us and the rest of the way. Because that was quite a thing that happened.-it's quite a long story. So they was so good. But when they changed to those little lighter boats that you had to buy, then they didn't do that. Instead of turning up on the other one, they would turn under, no matter how you tied them. Well, that wasn't so good, because then it wasn't working, so I quit having them about four years ago, because I didn't want to row single boats.-it takes so long now that you have so much smooth water is why I object. And the demand is for faster trips as a whole. So then I went to, oh, what we call a single.-one boat, two pontoons, that the other fellows run. And then I have always run the G-boat which is the three big ones together. That's what I put together in 1955. But that was a long exploratory, because first I pulled one back.-I learned I had to.-and then I had to go on the outside to get the motor, and it was so far out because these had bottoms on them then and I had to have somebody hold my ankle while I'd pull a motor up when I wanted to pull it up. Then when you bailed, it was like bailing the lake, you know. I mean, because you'd have so much water, and if they bailed one side and didn't get the other bailed, then that was so heavy that that's the way you'd go down the river, would be that side forward. So you learned so much in those years as far as boats went. And so then I had Disney with me, no less, and I had this ranger I told you about.-Davis, Dan Davis.-who was our first ranger who went down, and then he went with me, got permission to go, and this was a charter trip with this fellow and his wife only, and only Dan Davis and myself and one helper. And Dan was to help him, only. And then the other fellow was to just be what I needed. And then Dan was to do the cooking and all for him, thank goodness, because looking at him I figured I didn't want to cook for him, because, you know, just it was his attitude and all, he was German and real bossy and all, and thought, "Oh-oh!" So Dan Davis was going to be it. He took the Dutch oven and all this bit. [Ernst] Heiniger was his name. People here would remember, that set up the museum and all, because I did take the fellow who set up the museum. I can't think of his name real quick, but I took him down, too, on his first trip, that put that boat in [at the NPS Vistors' Center]. And so then that was how that came about. But anyhow, then I cut the bottoms out on that trip because I went down and had the three boats, and just the one fellow helping me. But you had to wait two, three days at places. Well then there was so much silt in those days, and then somehow the middle boat, I didn't know what was happening, because the two kept coming up higher and the boat kept getting smaller on the middle boat. And I thought, "Something's happening, I'm not sure what." So then when he had to wait he said, "Oh, we're going to have to wait here three days because I got the hummingbird's nest and we're going to do this and that." Okay, so then I said to my helper, "Unfortunately we're going to have to take this tube up, unstring it, and see what's happening to us. Because I'm not sure, when the tubes keep coming in and that keeps popping up, what's happening." And then when we got the tube up, guess what? The silt had come in the back where I had tried to cut it out to put the motor on the inside, and it hadn't got sealed tight. So then the silt would come up in and the water would drain out, but not the silt. So then it had silt up to here, solid. And that was sinking the boat in the middle. It was pulling the tubes together! (laughs) So the most we could do then, we had a shovel, and that was hard as it could be. We had to pour water on it and get some of it out before we could get anywhere near the bottom and I said, "Well, the time is coming, I don't know what's going to happen either." And I had no idea what the boat would do. I didn't know if it would spread way out like this. I didn't have any idea what it would do. And so I said, "We've got to cut this bottom. And then I got rope enough that we can put it under that tube and hope it holds the boat together so that the boat can't do this on us. Instead of doing this way, it's going to do that. See, I didn't know these things then. And so then that's what we did. That was the first bottom that was ever cut out, completely. I had already cut the rear out, thinking I could fix that front to where it wouldn't leak, but that was my error.-I couldn't. So now I cut the front out and got this thing up on the rope that I had. So then it went the rest of the way and it worked so much better that I thought, "Hmm, why have I got a bottom in the others?" (laughs) So then I cut all the bottoms out and that's where your boat comes that they run yet today, that everybody runs.-a single boat, because you have them made this way, with the bottoms out, and for the motor in the back, and then the two tubes. So it's identical except a smaller version, of still what I have on my other boats.
Underhill: And why did you put the motor on the inside?
Clark: Oh, we couldn't afford to have the motors on the outside.-it'd hit everything. You hit the rocks and all. And I only had a ten-horse motor to begin with in the beginning, and with three big boats, what a laugh this was, in seventy, ninety thousand [cubic feet per second]. I mean, you couldn't do anything. You had driftwood you couldn't run it most of the time. Anyhow, you couldn't do anything in fact. And so it was a lot of potluck. All you mainly needed was a good strong heart, and be sure that you felt you could get off of anything you got on.-because you got on lots of rocks. Then they had wood on a lot of these rocks that would cut your boat and all kind of stuff like that would happen, so you took a lot of potluck. You just went, and just figured you'd get off somehow. And so that helped me up good, that I always figured I'd get off one way or the other. I'd just say, "Oh, well, not going to sit here forever.-we'll get there somehow." I used to tell people when we first went in the big boat, "Well, we'll get through somehow." And they got strainers on the dam (laughs) which didn't give them much encouragement. But somehow those big boats, people came right away. Then I started to get some people. There was something about the size of them. And believe it or not, in Chicago I was going to the Cow Palace.-I was the only one that had river trips then, people didn't know anything about it.-so then in order to try to get people I took one of them big boats up, believe it or not, because this was a rascal to take it all the way up there and blew it up so people could see what it looked like. (laughs) It was one of the old surplus boats at that time. It was quite a job to get that up in there and then blown up and all that goes with it, you know. But then I started to get people when I said, "Well, it hasn't upset so far." Then as it kept going, it didn't upset and I, like now can say safely, it can't upset.-at least it never has in a hundred twenty-five thousand [cfs], ninety or nothing, at all.-it just don't upset. You have to hang on, however. And this is clear up, or clear through that you have to hang on good. You have to hang on to your ropes good.
Underhill: I've heard a term: a "Georgie sandwich." Do they [the boats] still make a Georgie sandwich?
Clark: Well, they don't make a sandwich now. A lot of people going down don't understand. When I go through Crystal now, and you go up and the whole wave takes you up, the water.-you have to know your water.-people through just don't know anything about water at all; all they know is there's a lot of it. So then when you go like this [perpendicular to the river, against a wall], they think that the (coughs) one boat is just coming up, when it isn't.-it's going like this and the people up here looking down on you. If you see how the boats are tied, it's impossible and always has been for big boats to go on the other one. Now little boats could make a sandwich.-when I had these little ten-man, then they could come up and go flat. But the big boats could never come up, only a certain little ways, because if you could see how they're tied, it's impossible. It's just impossible. But people still think that one is coming to the other one when you go up on this wave, because they're up so high looking down on the other people here who are down in this trough and this wave is up like this and they're in that trough so they think it's coming on them.-it isn't. Because when I show them it's impossible, then even they can see it couldn't happen. You'd have to tear so many rings off you couldn't do it. Not the way the water is now. But when I go through Crystal or something once in a while, they do. Because I got Suzanne, who's in charge of River Days here, to go, and took her through.-[like] Dan Davis. So I've been taking some of the rangers through. (laughs) And having real good runs with them. Suzanne admitted she was kind of scared, because she had been down, and then she had went with Tom [Workman, a ranger] from Lee's Ferry, and they were practicing rowing and all, and somehow in Bedrock he got on the wrong side of Bedrock and then the water came up. Normally when he's alone, he got on through. So this time he got on the wrong side and he thought, "Oh, well, the water will come up and we'll be okay." But this didn't happen and the boat upset. So then that kind of scared her to death. So when she came with me, she admitted she was pretty scared, in a way, of water. She said, "I'm just going on the faith that because you take all these people that I could hardly say 'no' when you've got all these kids on board." I had a bunch of kids. She said, "With all those kids," (laughs) "I can't say 'no,' you know, when you've got a bunch of. . . ." Which I do, I always take the kids, because it's safe. You're not going to upset. And the kids, oddly enough the kids hang on, they have no weight, and you don't have any problems with the kids. I take them down, you know, four and six years old, don't have any problem. Nobody else takes them under twelve. And I don't have a bit of problem with them. In fact I have quite a few family groups now. The ones I get, of course, have been used to going, so the kids are not normal kids that have nothing more to do than fight one another. They usually are darned good kids. They're really good and they amuse theirself at night building sand castles and what-have-you. And I just don't have any bad luck with them at all, is the odd thing. And I don't mind taking them through rapids, because you tell them to hang on, they just do.
Underhill: Too scared to let go!
Clark: And if I see them not even thinking about it, why then I would put a rope on them and tie them in, because your boat doesn't upset. But gee, they're good as far as I'm concerned.-no problems.
Underhill: To back up just a little bit, how did you come up with the name "Royal River Rats"?
Clark: Well, in the old day I went on lots of other rivers: I went on the Cataract and the Glen. And then if they just wanted to be at [Lake] Powell, I came from Green River, Wyoming. Although I never thought too much about the rivers above Cataract, because they didn't have the rapids, and I like rapids, and admitted, being a restless nature and liking thrills.-I did like thrills.-and naturally restless, that I didn't think so much about a lot of that smooth water, even in the big water day, why, some of that was kind of smooth up there. And I didn't care for it. But I did go up there sometimes if they kept yipping. Why then I would go up there in early.-I'd go up there usually in March and start. I know the one time we had snow right on the river and people were getting their sleeping bags (laughs). And these are little boats you had to take up there at that time to get started to get through some of the things. But they were so cold. But I ran the Cataract, and we called these people just regular river rats, because I was trying to get them on the Grand. Then we had special things that we'd give them when they were Grand Canyon Royal River Rats that they were "royal." Then we used to initiate everybody who went through the Grand Canyon, which nobody does any more. And a lot of people liked it, because now they repeat and bring a friend and they just have a fit if I don't initiate their friend.
Underhill: Can you describe the initiation?
Clark: Because they like it, yeah. So I had to have a special initiation. I had a nurse, too, that went, and her doctor friend had went and had this on his wall.-used to give these plaques, they'd get them up on wood and all, a certificate they'd put up. And he just loved it, so she wanted one too. And so she said, "Well, I want that, and I want initiated too." So I said, "Okay." (laughs) So she was our night's amusement. We initiated her. (laughs)
Underhill: And what kinds of things do you do at your initiation?
Clark: Oh, it's simple, actually. A lot of people used to laugh.-it is educational, because we blindfold them and then we lead them around over hill and dale, but watch and they can't fall because they've got two hands front and back. And we'll tell them, well, your flashlight went out and you didn't bring extra and you're trying to find the toilet or you're trying to find the water or something. And so they stumble around and it's real eerie when you get blindfolded and really can't see. Anywhere out there when there's rocks and all, you've got to lift your feet high and what-have-you. And we do little things like that. We'd take them down, sit them down. Then we'd throw some cold water on them and tell them that's just to clear their memory. And we'll tell them, "Now, this is educational. If you give the right answer, you don't get no water. If you give the wrong answer, then you -get a bucket of water." So then we would ask them, starting at the first rapid.-because we tell them the rapids as they come through, and we tell them if Powell named it, if there's any stories connected to it. And then we tell them the camps at night.-you're supposed to make note and you're supposed to remember where you're at now. You know, and these things, because when you get initiated in the old day, you're going to have to know these things. And different formations.-at least the color of the rock and a few things or where it's at, what rapid. You're supposed to know a few of these things. So then we'd start and we'd go right to the end of the line. We used to have a big line, of course, of the people, and we'd start and go down the line. So they didn't have to know everything, they just had to know whatever they got when you got at them, that hit them. And if they didn't give the right answer, we threw water at them and then went to the next person. We'd tell them the right answer and then go to the next person. And if anybody else answered when they shouldn't have.-because you're only supposed to answer when you tap them on the head.-then you'd throw water on them too, because they'd get anxious and be answering if you didn't watch them! Then after you did this, then at that time, people then were a little tougher.-you wouldn't do it now.-but you did it then, just automatically. You'd crack an egg on their head and give them a crown and take a picture and tell them they're going to take the oath. And we'd wash it off so it wouldn't stick in their hair, however. And this was always did in an afternoon when it was warm.-not at night.-but when the sun was out and the cold water felt good. And then we laid them over and a couple would bring them over and would say, "Oh, this person wants to be a Royal River Rat. They've come through the Canyon and they've been through the tests and everything." And so then they kneeled down in front of me and so I'd tell them different things and I'd say, "Well, on the river, you know, by this time, that no matter what happens to you, the main thing that you must learn is a slogan that everything is just the way you like it." And I said, "Now, if you agree, you say 'yes,' when I nudge you on top." I always had a stick or something, I nudged them, "Well, you say 'yes," and then all will be well." So then when you would tell them this, then even if they did say yes, then you'd whack them with a paddle. You had them kneeling down, so you'd hit them.-not hard.-but you'd hit them with a paddle. Then you'd raise them up and take their blindfold off. And then if it was a girl, the fellows would kiss her, and if it was a man, the women would kiss him. (laughs) Then he was a Royal River Rat. And then we usually give them blackberry [liquer] at night. We had a blackberry cordial was our traditional drink, and always was for a long time, at night, because it goes good in coffee, tea or cocoa. And I had it first in first aid, believe it or not, and I had a fellow along who kept wanting to have it at night, and I said, "No way, it's first aid for medicinal purposes." The last night he said, "Let's bring this out and I'll show you how to use it." So I did and then he put it in everybody's coffee, tea and cocoa and they were crazy about it because they was wet. So then I started having the stuff. I'd have one bottle, two bottles, and pretty soon, it was just tradition. Everything I do comes because of something occuring or something happening. Everybody asks me why I changed from black shorts to the leopard skin and I said, "I used to wear a red top and then it always had a grease spot on it when I went to motors and my sister hated this because she said, "You never look clean." So I went home one day and she had bought the whole outfit.-the bathing suit, the pants, everything.-so I couldn't say I didn't have it.-of the leotards and the leopard skin. And the stretch type. She made sure the legs were loose enough that it wouldn't hinder my action and I couldn't find no excuses. So then I started to wearing them and wore them ever since, because it's true, they don't show the dirt. They don't show. It's just another spot, you know, if you get an oil spot. (laughs) It's just another spot.
Underhill: A smart idea!
Clark: So I've wore it ever since. Of course then I. . . . Then I had a cameraman come from Salt Lake and he said, "Georgie, you ought to have a flag, so I brought you one." And he had bought a leopard skin square and he put it up, as a flag. So then I've been having the flag ever since. So everything came about mostly because of somebody. I mean, it was because something happened. In the old days, you put everything on the ground, because when you had camped so high, you didn't have level ground, and you had to fit stoves in between rocks to be safe. You couldn't have used a table on that. And then the same, whatever you eat you had to have on the ground, because you're on the slant. In high water you didn't have no level ground. People don't understand this. In the really high water, you didn't have.-because when it dropped and it would start dropping silt down lower would be where the camps were, even if you wanted so water came up. So then you had. . . . I was going through a department store one day and they had the kids' wading pools with just the two blow ups. And I thought, "Hmm, they're always kicking dirt in on that tarp and stuff rolls off of it and you can't have a table." And I got the wading pools, and just the small one and I could carry an extra one. You could blow them up. Worked perfect. So then I really used that, clear up until about ten, eleven years ago. Everybody got such a kick out of it, they'd have a party at home, they'd have a wading pool and put stuff in it. So I thought it was okay, you know. But then the Park Service said, "Hey, we say everybody is the same. You can't be the pioneer anymore, you have to have a table." We know the food's okay now, because I had to switch and have fresh meat and salad. But I still wanted to, because on our steaks and all, I thought, "I don't want paper plates and all." So people'd say, I'd say, "Just bring a spoon." "How you going to eat a steak with a spoon?" And I'll tell them, even yet, "You'll see." Because we have tortillas, and we get them without bones or without any fat and then you just put them on a tortilla and that's it. And the same on pork chops. They had the skinless and boneless chicken the same with the chicken. So we just use tortillas for everything and we don't have no paper plates. (laughs) So it works real fine. (laughs)
Underhill: Do you still serve the blackberry brandy?
Clark: Oh, yeah! I liked the liqueur to begin with. It was more expensive than brandy, but there is a difference in the taste. But then when they got the computers on in the market, then it didn't sell so good because it was about three dollars and fifty cents more a bottle. So then they quit making it. So now unless you buy it from France or Mexico or something, you can't get it. So then I get the brandy instead. But I still get a present because when they give me the big birthday party over at Hatch's, then Hatch give me a whole case, and I couldn't figure where he got it. He got it from France.-the liqueur.
Underhill: And this was your eightieth birthday party in 1990 at the Hatch warehouse?
Clark: Yeah. I give him a whole case of it. So, boy, did I treasure that and took it on the river and just had so many, one per trip or two per trip, and everybody was really.-the oldtimers were really looking for it, because, you know, they can't hardly get it.
Underhill: I've heard that there's some River Rat songs. Can you sing any of the River Rat songs?
Clark: I don't remember them, now. No, I don't. Well, we had just the one that we sing to everybody, which is not much of a song, that goes, "I'm a river rat, you're a river rat, we're all a river rat, and when we get together we like to sing our song." And then it just goes, "Yak, yak, yak," and you clap your hands, and "yak, yak, yak," about four times. And people like that action, to clap with their hands. And then you give a loud yell, "Yah!" to everybody going by you. So we still do that when we go by anybody in the Canyon, even though we're earlier than they are, because we're on the river at seven, we camp earlier than they do by far, but we also go earlier. And this is better, because you get into canyons you want, you get the camp you want, and everything. And it just works better. And so that's how we do it, and we go by them and they haven't quite had their breakfast yet. And then we give them this song, this "yak, yak, yak." We make sure that we have that, because they can hear that. And if there's rapids, they might not hear the other. And that, you know, then that cheers, and give that to everybody going down the river. (laughs) Until they get to where they almost give it back to us, if they happen to see us again. And it makes for a lot of fun.
Underhill: Speaking of fun, what sort of practical jokes have been played on some of your trips? Do you remember some?
Clark: Oh, we used to have a lot of different things that we would do that varied a whole lot. Oh, it just kind of goes according to the group you have and all this kind of thing.
Underhill: Any one in particular stand out in your mind.-either that you played or someone played on you?
Clark: No, not particularly. . . . They didn't play as much on me, oddly enough. Somehow I was always working. Between the motor and the kitchen.-and I still handle the kitchen and everything, setting it up. And I handle the big group and give the others the little group. So actually, I'm always working on the river. I'm with the people, but I am the working one.-we'll put it this way.-on everything, so that I'm still at work when you do different things all the time. We still have always a birthday party, but now we put it down to one night, because they're shortening our days to where we don't have the days we used to. And a lot of people write if they have a birthday and let us know if they want to have a party. [END TAPE 1, SIDE B] 33
[Begin Tape 2, Side A]
Clark: And then if they do that, we try to give them a tee shirt and then we make them think they're going in the river, but then we don't usually do that, because now people wouldn't like it quite as well. They're not quite as rugged.-as I put it.-they're not quite like they used to be. (laughs) They're not quite as tough as they used to be. So you don't do that. You make them think they're going, but they don't. You have people stand and then you collect crazy presents for them, from everybody and it's all wrapped up. And then they go and they undo their presents. Of course they just get everything.-sometimes good, sometimes bad. But this is where people have to have it, because they don't bring nothing special.-and they get all kinds of crazy stuff, believe it or not. You can't believe what sometime comes out of that bag. (laughs)
Underhill: Do you remember any of the things in particular? Or any of the presents?
Underhill: Oh, just different things sometimes, you know. Amazing things come out of that bag at times. So it was quite amazing. So after that we blindfold them and then we run them through a line. Everybody stands with their legs apart, far up the sand. We try to have a real sand beach and then we tell them, "Well we're sorry we have to put you in the water." And as they go through, everybody whacks them one. And then we have a guard to go along to be sure that they don't try to get out. And then the last person on the bottom, they have them put just a little water on the bottom part of them.-depends what time it is, so they don't get cold, but not to get their hair or anything wet.-and make them think they're going in the water. Then we take their blindfold off and then usually sing them a song, a birthday [song]. I usually have people along, a lot of the boatmen are good at singing and this type thing, to sing.-give them a song and all that, and all that type thing. So they all like it.-birthday. Then I even have a lot of people on honeymoons that write. And they write because they do want a party. I'll say, "Now, do you or don't you? Because you don't even mention it if you don't want one. You don't even let anybody know." But they do, so. . . . So that we do have one spot.-we have one good camp.-and we have the party there and make it all-in-one as to what they have.
Underhill: What other kinds of things do you do in camp in the evening?
Clark: Well, you always talk about where you've been, what you're going to do tomorrow and all these different things, so that they do know before Crystal and about hanging on. I usually tell people anyway on the boat, exactly how we're going into it, so they know it's not by accident, because no other boats go there. So then when I go right over by the wall and right into the big water, that they don't get frightened, that they know it is.-that I'm there because I want to be there (laughs), that that's where we go, and this type thing. So we do that. Then you have the hikes and all. And the fellow who is coming tonight to listen in tomorrow on the meeting.-he's [Al Korber] a very good geologist. And he isn't boring: He puts a lot of life into it and a lot of Indian stories and adds a little junk, you know, to make it interesting, and this kind of thing, so that he's not boring. Because I've had a few professors out from college and sometimes they're too much to the book, and then it's just don't give any interest. You know, just doesn't get the interest. And you have to do this at the right time, also. If you do it at the middle of the day or when you see things, if you tell formations as you see them, it's of interest. But on my people, at least, you're not going to sit them down at night and talk something dry and think they're going to sit up and listen, because they're going to go to sleep or go to bed. So if you have something at least lively, okay. If you haven't.-forget it. Because, you know, then they'll talk in little groups. But you can't have a dry speech at night, because they, as I say, they get up early and they just will go to sleep or wander off.
Underhill: How did you come to use firemen as boatmen?
Clark: Well, in the early days, first of course, I rowed the boat, and then that was okay. And then I got other little.-and I had certain boatmen who later had a concession: Ron Smith was one of them and Dick [McCallum], who still lives over in Flagstaff. They were very good boatmen. They didn't particularly like people, so I always had to lead all the hikes, because they wouldn't stay with the people, but they were awfully good boatmen. Then when I went to the big boats, however, then I had to have somebody that got along on the little boats. Then I found that, believe it or not, there was a great jealousy in the old day, among ones on little boats, when you had one on each side and we didn't have a motor on little boats, they just rowed. And each one, somehow wanted to out-do the other one, and you have to work together, because when you have three boats, you both like one side or the other of the oar, and it has to be real coordination. So if they didn't get along, it was a disaster. So I had two firemen who were passengers who were captains down in L.A., and I said, "Oh, I'm having trouble. Now that I am running this big boat, I can't run little boats and I'm having.-I can see I'm going to have trouble on jealousy, just between the boatmen." I said, "It's something I never thought about," and I said, "because they have to coordinate, not each trying to be better than the other." So he said, "Why don't you try firemen?" He said, "Because they have to work together, they have to get along. On everything they do, it has to be together." He said, "We'll come up, I like them to keep in condition anyway," and he said, "We'll come up, and if you'll let us, why, we're inexperienced, but we know enough that we'll get by and we'll show you." So they did for a while. Then they are the ones who got other firemen. And I still have firemen. I have others too, but I have a lot of firemen, because they do get along, and they like people. They're used to talking, they have a lot of go, and of course they're trained physically. They have to pass a test every month. They always have medical CPR and everything else. See, very advanced, so they're literally just all set for you. (laughs) Real physical condition, and they have to have this and that or they can't be a fireman. Because particularly L.A. is very tough. They're not as tough in San Frisco [San Francisco] on them as they are in L.A., because I've had some of the San Frisco ones, but they're not as tough as the L.A. The L.A..-somehow they.-oh, they just are tougher on them.
Underhill: How would you describe your relationship with the boatmen over the years?
Underhill: Oh, it's always been good.-very good companionship and all that. I get along with them real well, so I have not really had that much clash. A few things you have to watch them on.-originally about not drinking when they were rowing or something too much, because even before the rules came out that they have now, because it was alright at night, but you didn't want it in the day. And they didn't drink when they were on the fire department, but then because they were out relaxing, like a vacation, then they tended sometimes, and even at night, to want too much. And so that was the only thing you had to watch them on quite a bit at first, and make them see your side, that they couldn't work in the fire department and drink, and while they were working it wasn't the thing.-at night, but not during the day, and then reasonable at night too. And so that was only one of the few things, you know. But there always was a little jealousy, a little bit, though, even.-I couldn't get outside of the L.A. Fire Department for a while, because when I tried to bring in the L.A. County firemen, believe it or not, there's a jealousy. Because in the L.A. firemen, they do not associate, normally, with the L.A. [ed: County] firemen. And you find this among rangers too, you know.-certain cliques of different sections do not get along so good. It's amazing. I didn't know there was so much jealousy in the world! (laughs) Having led my own life so much, I just didn't know it existed, because I never had any reason, of course.-having a different life, you know. Because of course I've always had a sort of a different life.
Underhill: What kind of a boss do you think you are? Are you strict or. . . ?
Clark: Well, they always say I run a tight ship, but (coughs) my own. But it's mainly in regard to hanging on and having people hang on, watching. And also the boatmen not to do what they don't want the people to do. I said, know when you show off, you do as you want the people to do. If I tell the people.-on the big boats, particularly.-you put a hand down, slide off.-you don't stand up there and jump off in the water, because there might be rocks under there and you don't do it either, because then they can't do it that way. And when you take hikes, you don't do what you don't want them to do. You're not out to show how good you are.-you're out just to lead them safely. So that's the only way that they call it "a tight ship," is because of that factor.
Underhill: Have you had boatwomen, as well as men?
Clark: I have some that help, and mostly in the kitchen. The ones that I've had, oddly enough, work at other jobs, so they're not looking. Authentically, they're not looking for anything, because they have other jobs they like and are with it.
Underhill: I found a lot of references in your scrapbook to Bambi. Was she a part of the crew, or was she a passenger? Do you remember a Bambi?
Clark: I'm trying to think now. (pause) I think she was a passenger, quite a few times.
Underhill: Okay. This was a while back.
Clark: I have a lot of repeat passengers go an awful lot of times. And a lot of my people are older now, can't go, and even yet have gone ten, fifteen times: Joe [Josef] Muench, who takes pictures for the Arizona Highway [ed: Arizona Highways magazine], has been with me fifteen times. I just seen him, in fact.-he's fixed me some more pictures. And then a whole lot like that. I have some Chicago.-still get to the boat show who are ninety-three. And I have one woman who's ninety-six who went with me time and time again. She went on the Cataract and the Glen. Her husband died, and I met her when her husband had died, and she always drove a little trailer for him even then, because he had heart trouble and he used to go out in the country, calling on them at their homes, so she could really drive. So she had this little trailer and she met somebody in a park and they said, "Oh, you've got to come and go on the Glen Canyon. I'm sure she.-at that time they knew I couldn't get passengers.-she'll have room. So she come up and went on the Glen. And then she proved it was just the thing for her. And she had to save.-not that she had a lot of money, because she was just on some kind of a pension or something.-and she would make beads and sell them and all this stuff. And so she had to work for it, but she was determined to pay for her way. And she went every so often. She'd save so much and go every year for many years. Then her grandkids went. And oddly enough, she has just terrific health. Then her children don't, though. This is strange to my way of thinking, because the one son got cancer and passed away. And then darned if the daughter didn't get it. This is when they were about thirty-five, forty years old. And I thought, "Wow!" But evidently, cancer comes from something that's not inherited. I don't know, but it must, because gee, she's got such health.
Underhill: Why do you think people keep coming back? It seems you have more repeats than a lot of other companies.
Clark: Well, we're more out. I don't have the real high prices the others do. And a lot of times, they ask me why, because we do have the fresh meat and the vegetables and all. So there's no difference in food. And then it's because we try to have more fun. I like more of a fun trip, because I even said right to the rangers, when they keep changing things and talking about wilderness trips and geology, and I'll say, "The only thing you leave out in anything is to have fun." You never heard the word "have fun, enjoy yourself".-all you hear is this wilderness, and I said, "It's not a wilderness, as such, any more. For America, now, it's still more than they get anywhere else, but is not wilderness, as such.-not when you have this many people that eat steak at night." (laughs) It's not wilderness. (laughs) So they're about ready to crown me with a brick, you know, because I'll say these things to them. You know, "between you and I," I said, "I don't tell people this." When I'm going down, I don't talk about the past to people, because they're paying for this trip and I want them to enjoy it. So I never talk about the past to people unless they ask me just something special. But I don't overplay it over the present. Because after all, you know, they're having this trip and paying money for it and I'm not about to down it from what was.
Underhill: In the early years you did the "Share the Expense" plan. How did that come about?
Clark: Oh, I did for years, up until the Dam [Glen Canyon] come in, because people didn't go. They just didn't go. And so it was, because I sold real estate in the winter.-had a real estate license.-I said I could work at everything.-and I sold real estate for quite a while. Even when I went to Ferry Command I was selling real estate. Then my sister took over, because she had a license too. And I just went back to it when I come back out again, because it was, I found, even then, was a good thing to have a license on. So then there was this "We Share the Expense." Then I'd sell real estate, I'd keep talking river trips (laughs) along with it, you know, trying to get people. Because you couldn't get enough.-it was anything but. And then when I'd go to all these other countries at that time.-because I went up to Alaska three years before it was a state, and up to the Northwest Territory, and all these places, before anybody went on rivers. In Mexico a lot when nobody went. A whole lot in Mexico. And then down in Guatemala. And just twice down to South America, because I didn't care for it so much. But you had to just have a share, or nobody didn't have nobody. And particularly when I had just the little boats, you just didn't have them.-clear up until, oh, clear 'til the Dam was starting to build. Then suddenly it become popular, it got lots of advertising, people aren't going to be able to go.-then all of a sudden Glen Canyon and everything got real popular. And then you could make a living at it. Then the government stepped in and then it become a concession of the Grand Canyon. And then, of course, everything kept changing. Then you got your droughts, which you never had in the old day, as I said. You only had droughts two years.-in 1952 or 1953, I think it was, that you had a drought. And all the time in the old days, you always run ninety thousand [cubic feet per second]. Seventy, eighty, ninety was common. And now and then a hundred and twenty-five thousand [cfs].
Underhill: How did you feel about the building of Glen Canyon Dam, and how do you feel now?
Clark: Well, because there's so many people.-being as they change, and so many people actually like the Dam. They enjoy going up on Lake Powell. So if you're taking a percentage of people, then the Dam is for them, you know, because they like that type thing. And then as long as you're going to have more people, because they don't have anything or birth control then, and you get so many children, then when they let everybody come in the country come in, you get more and more people.-Las Vegas is a good example, because they still have five, six thousand every month come in. And I've been there twenty years, and boy, it's changed like you've never seen, and so then there's a shortage of everything. The water is a lot higher and you can't use it only at certain times, the electric and all this stuff.-they're getting lots of problems because of the population. So as long as they're going to have a population boom, you're going to have to have, and you have to look at it as such, you're going to get power from somewhere.-you're either going to have dams, power plants, or something.-you don't want any of them, but it's the way it's going to be, because nobody is going back to live primitive, you know.-even mildly so any more, because they're used to it there.- used to getting everything they want.
Underhill: How did you feel about it when they were starting. . . ?
Clark: Oh, I was just glad that I had it for so many years. Because I had had it, you know, all of us share the expense, yet I had it to myself for twenty-five years. And all the other rivers, too, remember. So I was just getting by, not saving any money, but I was having a good old time, as far as I was concerned. Then particularly after my daughter was killed, then my mother the same way was killed, so then it was only me, so what's the difference. You know, I could take the chance. As I said, I was not one that worried too much, because you didn't have insurance or nothing. I just went, and that was that. I didn't worry about it. I just went and took the shot and spent whatever I had for boats. . . . And of course I'm real glad I did, because you'll never do it again. And you certainly couldn't do nothing over, because it isn't there (laughs) and that's anywhere. You know, there's dams everywhere.-Mexico and everywhere now. And you couldn't do it over again, and not for what I liked. When I first seen the Grand and went swimming, it had everything I wanted: It was beautiful beyond words, like nothing I'd ever dreamed of; and it was wild; and at the same time you had the parts that was peaceable and the beautiful beaches; and last but not least, there's no mosquitos. (laughs) Well, that's a big deal when you're living out all the time, you know, that you don't have to always be slapping at mosquitos, because you have them everywhere else. You have them in Mexico, you have them almost everywhere. Certain times of the year, you can't run around like you do in the Grand Canyon. And on the Grand, it's still quite good today. You have a few flies or something.-you get close to Phantom [Ranch] or something, but not a whole lot. But not like others, and at least you don't have the mosquitos until you get, oh, way further down towards the lake you might get a few, but not as bad as other rivers, even so.
Underhill: It sounds like when you first saw it, you fell in love with it.
Clark: I said I was going to be there forever. I made the statement to my family, "I found what I want," which was true. It was what I had been looking for. I was looking.-as I said, I was restless.-I looked for something, I didn't know what, and I found what I wanted, because it did, it was always changing, remember, and when the water came up, and when it went down, it always put the silt in different spots. And it took years to know the Canyon, because when you went on different water levels, everything was so different, it was like you'd never been there. And you had to learn to look real high at canyons to have any idea where you were. And the speed was so great, and on the water you didn't have the slow water like now. The speed was so great without a motor or anything, you know. And the motor on the three big boats is mainly for steerage to get into shore and this type thing. And even on the big three boats yet, it's hard to run, and you don't have the power like the other boats, at all. And that's why other people don't run it, because it is difficult to run.-you have to go with the water. So you actually are crossed between a motor and a little boat having oars, only you don't have as much control as it does. So you do have to know what you're doing to run the big three boats yet, because there's some spots so tight that all river runners, and they come to Bedrock and this real low water, and the day I run it, is always real low water, and I just got to know how to do it. But otherwise, they always say, "I'd sure like to watch you run Bedrock, because I don't know how on earth you can ever get a thing like that through." (laughs) And I said [to Matt], "Well, I don't want you watching me, because you might bother me." and you might take away my concentration on how I'm doing it."
Underhill: Now why do you just "shoot" the rapids? You don't stop usually to look and contemplate....
Clark: Oh, I don't like to stop and look. I never did stop and look at rapids. I always thought I could do better from the middle of the rapid to know where I want to go, and I know the motor's okay, and I know that everything is going beautiful . . . and if I'm going. But if you pull in and people get off and on, they might drop a string, it might get in the motor. You're just not settled in, where if you go right into the rapid when you come down, and you can (coughs) if you watch, you can maneuver just as good right from the middle of the rapids you decide where you're going to go, and it works a lot better. I never did stop and look a rapid over anywhere, because I just don't like that way of doing it, because I like the instant decision better, and you have to have positive decision. You can't think, "I ought to go here, no I ought to go there," because this wouldn't work! (laughs) You'd be in great trouble with those three boats like that, because you haven't got power. Now with the single boats you've got enough power that you could change your mind and run up some and back over.-particularly now when you don't have much water. But you can't do it when you don't have that power.
Underhill: What kind of people went down with you initially? And are there different people now than there were twenty-five years ago?
Clark: Well, originally, for all they were professional people, oddly enough. Most were professional, but they had a pioneering spirit and they were repeaters, and they went and went. And they were fabulous, and they're still my friends today. They're still my friends today.-I see some of them, they're older, they can't go for various health reasons, and a lot of them, of course, are gone, because you go along and so many have left. But they had the pioneer spirit. And then there was no complaints of any kind, because they just had that. And a lot of the times, older people even have that, because they still retain that being used to everything. And so that is what makes the difference. But to me.-you was asking how I felt about the dams.-well, I feel lucky I had it, mainly. And with the world changing for the population, why, that's how it's going to be. I'm surprised that more don't look at it that way, because I tell them, until they get birth control, why, you can't change things. When they're talking conservation and everything, they never mention less people, getting birth control. There's just so many people, and if you're going to get more, why, that's how it's going to be. (laughs)
Underhill: I think we need to take a break now for the audio, so we'll stop for just a moment and see what we're doing. (pause) You mentioned that you've done a lot of television appearances. Can you describe some of those for us?
Clark: Most have been a lot of fun. Originally, you know, I took a lot of film. And I took on every trip. And so then I go to these shows.-but even then, they like rapids. So I cut all the rapids out. Rapids I didn't have left. And they weren't interested in the terrific beauty that you had, and some of them were a little rough at first, but I'm very lucky because there weren't other people that had them. So I got on the very first black and white pictures, on Bold Adventure, and then I got on a lot of different things later, and a lot of short talk shows and all this type of thing, because it was something that nobody knew about, and it was real good to get on that, so I was very lucky about that. So I had an awful lot of film.-I gave it to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. And I gave them twenty-nine rolls of two thousand feet. (laughs) But the only thing, they didn't have a lot of was the rapids, because I couldn't afford to have them copied and I used the rapids up at that time. I kept a real good copy of rapids, however, before you didn't have enough water to run Crystal real good, where you had the real high water. So I have probably the best pictures, and I will try to get you a copy of them. They're really good rapids on Crystal, because I still kept those, and I can still get them on video and everything. They don't show as good on video as when you've got the big screen is where they show.-a ten by twelve.-they look terrific. The one I remember, though, is Fox Movietone went down.-you know, they used to do twenty-one minutes. And so they went down with me just before the dam, believe it or not, and ninety-thousand.-they wanted to tape the last run, and they did. And we went down it and so then just at Hermit, which has big waves, but no rocks, and I kept telling the one fellow.-they had two cameras.-and I kept telling the one, "You have to sit down on this, because the waves are big. There's no rock and we're not going to hit rock, but it is such big waves, you no way." And they had the great big cameras in those days that they carried on their chests and had a strap around it and a quick release on it. And so come what may, he wanted to shoot, he got so excited, and he partially stood up and then he got swept off. (laughs) Then the other fellow was taking pictures and he took a picture of him! And this was what I didn't want, was bad publicity by going off.-it's what I didn't want at all, you know. But there it is, you know. And so anyhow, we got him back on, but he lost the camera, because then he had to press that quick release. And he lost the camera, but they took it as it was. He said, "Well, you told me!" And so that's how it went. And so then they had the film on. Then they had it in all the big theaters at that time. So then I just got to Chicago, and I was on this summer run or whatever you called it then, so I just got to Chicago and they had it on this theater. So I said, "Oh, good, there's some River Rats. Just go in and don't say a word to anybody," because nobody knew about it. Let's just sit behind some people and be quiet, so they don't know that you was on it, because some of the people have been on it. So then they show this and he shows a lot of the rapids. Then of course he shows this guy going off. (laughs) And this big voice.-which was what I didn't want.-but anyhow, they loved it.-since they had the picture of it.-and so there it was, you know. And so the people in front, it was what they were saying, you know, that I didn't want the people.-that I kept trying to keep them giggling here.-because they'd say, "Oh, them people are crazy to go do a thing like them. They're absolutely nuts. They must want to commit suicide." (laughs) And their remarks, you know, were everything but good, you know, about anyone that would do such a thing.
Underhill: Have you ever thought you were crazy?
Clark: And of course this was what Fox liked. They got that, one of the cameramen.-they said it was almost worth losing the camera, and since we picked him up alright, why. . . . And I said, "Well, it wasn't the kind of advertisement I wanted." But anyhow, there it was, you know. So sometimes things like that do happen, that you don't want. And it just happens.
Underhill: You mentioned people thinking that someone who did that must be suicidal or crazy, and I know some people in your book, you said, have called you "The Crazy Woman on the River."
Clark: Oh, when I first went, because I had swam, mainly. And I went clear down to Temple Water, then, when I started the boat trips. So then when I first started a lone, single, ten-man boat, and then you had everything there and all, when I would come in, and then even when I got to the big boats, I went down Temple Bar, clear up beyond when the concession come in, and they said, "Oh, here comes that crazy woman!" (laughs) You know, at first when it wasn't heard of. And I understand, It didn't bother me a bit.-as I said, nothing ever bothered me, and I just laughed and say, "Oh, it helps, you know," something like that, and just laugh, you know, at the same time. So they never bugged me an inch. Then of course I could laugh at them when it become suddenly the thing to do, you know.-and so popular, because then I had started the whole thing, really, so I could laugh at them at that time. But oh, for the years you took that! And then a lot of people.-I was up here.-I hadn't been to the South Rim. When I first run, I'd never been up here at the Canyon at all, for years. So then we used to stop at Copper Blossom there, and the men would go upstream and the women down, and we could strip off then without the bathing suits and get washed up good. And we paid no attention, went back. But I didn't realize that out at Desert View they had those binoculars, even then. And when I went over there and I looked through those binoculars, boy, you could see like nothing! I mean, right down to the beach in them. I couldn't believe it and I said, "Oh my God, we've been (laughs) going separate ways and washing up nude down there!" (laughs) And I had no idea! So I had no idea of anything at all. Nothing had ever got to me. And so there it was, you know. So we didn't do that no more, that was for sure! So I was so shocked when I found that there was binoculars that could actually. . . . And then the first time I took this Dan Davis down, that was in this.-anyhow, I took him down. And so then we picked him up, he hiked down the Tanner Trail. So we picked him up down at the bottom of it, and he got in and he said.-this was just nobody was going, and I wanted a ranger so he'd know something about it, that they wouldn't tell these crazy tales at campfire.-so then he said, "Anything happen?" And of course I wanted everything to look good, and nothing had happened, "Oh no, not a thing." Well then the first shot.-and this is (coughs) what happened is going around in the rapid at that time, is that, got right into the rapid, and then a fellow was bailing the boat.-we still had bottoms on them then.-and he was standing down, and he didn't hang on, and he got pitched off and he hung on the ropes and we hauled him back up. And then I sheared a pin.-they used to have pins on a motor.-and then I had to change a pin. Then we landed for lunch, and then we took the lunch bag and hiked up a ways to sit down.-and we were all together at that time, there was not that big a group.-and then here's a rattlesnake. (laughs) And this is happening like "bing, bing, bing," you know. He looked up at me and said, "Did you say nothing happened?!" (laughs) I couldn't convince him that nothing had happened the whole way down until he'd gotten there.-because he was only going to Phantom [Ranch]. And I had hoped, you know, nothing like this would occur until we got to Phantom. [END TAPE 2, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]
Clark: Then for some unknown reason, here it is, you know, like when you're trying so hard to get good publicity and never have nothing, then this is the way it goes, you know. You had a hard time making him believe otherwise. And he went with me and rowed as a boatman in the little boats for quite a long time afterwards. And so then he eventually had medical problems, and then he went to Omaha to set up parks, and then he came back, and then he retired an early retirement, then he went down to Tucson and he worked in that living museum [Sonora Desert Museum] weekends. Then the fellow retired who run it and then he's in a full-time job down there now. And this interview was later when they asked him about going in the Canyon and a few things. Then he took notes for me and in hiking and all, escape routes. And that's where they came from, the original escape routes [see NAU manuscript collection #270 for a copy of Davis' 1955 "Escape Routes" from the Grand Canyon], was between this, and my brother gave me a lot of notes beside.-was from all of us getting in on it, was where they originally come from. But again another time.-remember I'm trying to get good publicity, in the old day.-and I had some fellows: I was using Johnson Motors and I had the paper from L.A., and oh boy, I had quite a few that managed (coughed) they managed to get them together, so they're coming down, going to be good publicity. So everything was going beautiful and having no problems, actually, at all. So then I'm down below after we go through Upset, and thought nothing about Upset, this was when we had big, little boats. I'm waiting on the cliff down below for them, they don't come and they don't, and I thought, "I can't imagine what happens," because nothing ever happens there, smooth water outside of Upset. And they come in.-sure enough, one boat had gone on top of the other one, you know, and this kind of thing, and a couple of fellows had went off, and oh boy! And they had to fish them out and just all this and that. So we went ahead. But then the stories that they made, it showed, because the fellow didn't have the pictures, and when he got down into the Los Angeles.-I forget which paper it was .-the Herald Examiner, or one of them.-and then this was a really big setting: He had an artist draw from his memory the little boats. Then he had a guy flying in the air out into the rapids and all these things, you know! One boat on top of the other one! There shot my, you know, trying to get people, because people were afraid already: They weren't going to go with you! So there shot that good publicity. You couldn't win for losing when you took anybody! If I just had pictures of my own (stumbles) oh, that was allright, but if you took anybody, somehow you could sure. . . . Not too long ago, and that hasn't been about six years ago, I had a fellow from U.S. or something like that, News magazine. It was just going to be a little short piece like they have. But anyhow, and then that was fine.-and so nothing happened that was bad on it, but we come to Crystal. So then at that time, the water was high enough that I didn't run the motor through. I run the motor through now, because the water's so low you have to. But then at that time, they first started having plastic instead of having steel in the back of the motor that holds the cords for the starter pull. And so sometimes at first, those things would wear out when you had them on so many trips. Then they just wouldn't start, and that was that until you replaced them. So I knew what it was, but I hoped not to have it. So anyhow I went down, so this was when you pulled the motor up to go through Crystal, when you had higher water, because you didn't worry about rocks, and you could just go through. So I pulled the motor up, everything's beautiful, and I put the motor down, I pull it.-not a thing, just as dead as a door nail. And I said, "Oh-oh!" Because I'd had it on quite a lot of trips. I knew right now what it was. There was not one burp, even! (laughs) And I knew what it was. So I just started talking real fast and I said, "Oh, the motor's a little stubborn." I said, "Just like the old day. We'll just go ahead and float a trip, because you had a lot of potluck. We'll just call it potluck," and I just kept talking real fast, you know. And then down below here you had a real bad rapid, called tuna. Then down below that you had a great big rock in the middle and I said, "Oh, it's allright. When we come to that rock, if we get on, I can get off. I've been there before." (laughs) I'm talking so fast and I'm wondering what's going to happen on this rock, you know. I'm thinking about this big rock, "Oh boy, I'm probably going to straddle this thing." So then I come, and then a rock bumped my rear end just right and whipped that boat around and we run around that better than I could have run it! (laughs) Better than I could have run it, you know! And I said, "See, this boat don't even need me!" Talking to the people, you know, and laughing and everything, having a good time, you know. And then we got down further and I said to the boatmen, "Oh, it's okay, you can change the motor now." (laughs) But I was sure talking! So later he said, "You were talking fast there. You didn't have it that way in the old day. I noticed, you know." And I said, "Well, that's the way we did have it." He said, "I don't doubt it, but you know what, do you mind if I call you a 'chunk of granite'?" (laughs) I had some crazy hat on and he said, "I'm going to call you a chunk of granite with a crazy hat on, because you started covering real quick. You weren't disturbed, but you wanted to get the people not disturbed, so you started talking real fast." So that's just what he did in that article. "The captain of this ship is like a chunk of granite with a crazy hat on." (laughs) And I thought it would happen again. It wasn't bad luck, but not just the way I wanted it. I wanted it to go like it usually did.-you popped the motor and it went.
Underhill: You started to tell us while the audio [tape] was being replaced what happened on the Groucho Marx Show.
Clark: Oh, that on Groucho Marx, because I knew I shouldn't be on it, because I always had film, and then I could talk good with film because I had something to talk about. People knew what I was talking about, because in the old day they didn't really know what you were talking about. They just knew water, but they had no idea. So here I couldn't have film, and I didn't want him to talk on the Grand, because as you know, he mainly wanted to bring up something with sex or this or that. And I could see I couldn't convince him that there were no big sex deals on the Grand. At that time it was too serious and too much rapid and just too much everything. I said, "Well, I'm going to Mexico. You can talk on Mexico instead, because I don't get people there anyhow to share the expense, but normally we don't have them, and so that I'm not trying to build that to get people." "Okay, we'll talk on Mexico." So then we're going through and I'm showing him a brochure, which is real rugged at the time, because I told the fact that we do have alligators and that you do have snakes in the trees and it does rain.-this makes your camps like mud, real sticky mud, because it was the truth. Because there was no use going if you couldn't take it, because you'd go to see the country, and that's the way it is. And you go in August, because it rains to have enough water to go. So I was putting it hard and flat, because I didn't want anybody to go thinking they were going to be on anything but a tough trip, because they were tough. And so then he's reading this to the people (laughs) and laughing about it at the time. And so then he goes along talking, building up like he does and everything, and so then he was saying, "Well, I don't know, Georgie," he said, "if I go on that trip, you know, I think it would be cheaper if you'd be sure and take a couple of undertakers along, because evidently going to get somebody killed on there." And I had just picked up two people, adventurers, were not my trip, up on the Cataract, who had got drownded [ed: drowned], and I had buried the bodies up there and walked away. And I was real serious thinking about burying these bodies and I said, "Oh no, I shouldn't have said this," but I was thinking of them, I said, real serious, remember, I'm real serious-faced, and you've got an audience out here, and I said, "Oh no, you just carry a shovel and bury them on the spot." (laughs) And of course they roared! And everybody always remembered it.-and this is going across country.-and everybody always remembered just those words, "You carry a shovel and bury them on the spot." (laughs) Just what I shouldn't have said! (laughs) But I'm thinking about those on the Cataract, which is what we did.
Underhill: Have you actually ever lost anybody on your trips? Has anybody died while they were with you?
Clark: Heart failure.
Underhill: Heart failure?
Clark: Uh-huh.
Underhill: Do you know how many people have had heart attacks while they were with you?
Clark: No, just the one had a heart attack. Well, I knew that they had a heart problem. Now, on passengers, if I can help it, I don't take them if they've had very much heart problem. But some will go anyhow, and then tell you when they get through, they've had by-pass, and think it's funny. So I said, "Well, it isn't just your trip, but it spoils the other people's trip, is the problem." So now I tell them, "You spoil other people's trip. If you're going to die, you're going to die anyway, maybe," because as I tell you, you can't get help there that quick. "But you ruin everybody else's trip." And on my trips I have a lot of working people, where their money doesn't come that easy, because I do take the working, being cheaper, I apply for a lot of the working people, and that "you're ruining their trip, because then it's not the same if anything happens." And maybe you don't care, but it's bad for them. And so that's the way I put it now to everybody. But still you will have some that will go and then tell you at the bottom. You know, laugh and say, "Oh, I had by-pass, but I knew I could do it." And I tell them the same thing, "If you didn't read it," because as I've told them when we talk, it isn't you, it's the fact that you spoiled it for anybody else, because I know I've had it, and it just isn't good. And that's the way that one is.
Underhill: How common are injuries of a semi-serious nature, like a broken bone or that kind of thing? I know some people will get a cut and think it's horrible, but more serious injuries.
Clark: I haven't had a lot, thank goodness. But mainly, on my boats, you don't have frames, so then you just are not apt to have anything. And on the single boat, I have one boat that is the long boat and two tubes, but it also is a tie. And we travel together, and then we manage without having all that frame. So our boats are safer because we don't have frames. Only stuff soft, so in big rapids, you only have a soft boat and everything's in rubber bags. There's no metal. But in my frame boat, like everybody else has, then when you have a frame boat, then you have to go around the rapids carefully, because if you get in too big a wave and you get a bounce, and then your hand hits on a frame, even your hand, then, you can do something to it, or your arm. So then your frames.-and everybody knows that, is that you have to then not go where it's so rough, because if you do, you're apt to have somebody who will let go or do something and hit their hands on the frame, because it isn't soft. And so it's my frame boats that I can worry on. I've been very lucky on it, but it's the one, if any. I wouldn't worry about mine at all, actually. And I don't worry about the single.-and this fellow here tonight [Al] is the one that runs it, mainly, because he can go all the time. He's semi-retired, he's young, but . . . is anyhow, and he's very good, so that he's real good and very conscious on being it, and he just loves it, because it doesn't have it. But on a frame, but you have to, if they do all this cooking, aluminum and all, and they have to have a place to carry everything. So on a single boat you can't do it, unless you have all this. And beyond that, it's good, but you just cannot hit through things, you've got to go around every hole. Any holes of any size, you don't aim for them. I wouldn't be able to run that boat, probably, because all my life I have run for the big stuff, and I automatically would probably be heading for the big stuff. (laughs) I could run the other single, with a frame, uh with a string, but not that frame boat, because I just haven't ever had to do this sort of thing.
Underhill: What's the most serious accident that you've ever had on the river? Or have you had any?
Clark: No, not bad, as far as anything goes with arm or leg or anything. Got cut on the head a few.-got cut on the head on the frame boat, since the dam usually has been the most, but that's been it and outside of heart attacks. Had the heart attack. But been real lucky. But I preach safety an awful lot all the time, on it, but mainly just caution on everything.-but particularly the frame boat. And in a way, my running the big boat which goes through the rapids is sort of bad, in a way, to have the other boats even near me, because then they shouldn't see me at all, because then they, even to the boatmen, really wants to go where I go.-and particularly if the people say, "Well, why can't we go there?" It's hard to explain to them the difference in boats, and other companies very carefully don't stop.-if they know I'm going through Lava. They stop to look it over, but they plan it so, and say so, because they prefer not to have their people, naturally, watch me go through when they can't go through. They have to go to the right, and then to the lesser part of it. And I can understand that carefully, because I have the boats too that the same way, so we've got more now, instead of taking pictures, I can take it with the single boat (stutters) string, but not with the frame boat. I prefer to keep him where they don't see me. Then there's no question.
Underhill: On the Grig, do you still stand up all the way down?
Clark: Oh, yeah, I have to stand, with my motor. It's set up that way. But then, I'm used to it, and I have never got thrown out and I know exactly how to brace and how to get down. And Georgie takes good care of Georgie (laughs) or I wouldn't have survived all these years. Because remember when I first hiked and all, nobody knew anything about nothing, and I had a lot of time and did a lot of those long, long hikes with Harry Aleson, a hundred eighty miles and all. Then later we got to using the crepe paper and marking so we'd know where to get back down: if you'd get up and you couldn't get over a cliff, that you could back down, and be safe to do it, and pick up the paper as you went. And those little short crepe papers hang on to anything.-two, three inches wide. Miners use them all the time. My brother put me onto that, because he used to have a hobby.-he was an engineer liking to going out and follow some prospectors to these mines and things.-and they had used crepe paper clear back. And so he told me, "Always take it with you. When you have any doubts about getting back when you can't go forward, then you can always come back." So, boy, I used it alot, because I am the one who put most of the trails, originally, in the Grand. See, they weren't there, because Powell only had one and a half trips and so all the other times did, and I was the only one on the Grand going all the time and taking people for all them years. So I promptly, when I found a place away that I liked to get in, started beating a trail into it, and then I went the same way, and I used to mark it then and leave the papers, so we'd be sure and go the same way, until I could get a trail I could see in. And if anything at all so that we'd get back on the same trail, because most of those trails originally, from the river, and Deer Creek and that, are my trails. And the Park Service changed just the bottom part of Deer Creek recently to make it shorter, because a lot were coming up over the rocks, and that's why they did it, just on the bottom part.
Underhill: I have one last question before we stop for today, and let you have some dinner: Nevills talked about the fact that you're a woman, and he didn't maybe like women running, the river and you mentioned in your book that some of the newspapermen didn't want to cover you because you were a woman and if you'd been a man, they might have covered the story.-how much discrimination did you encounter through the years, being a woman river runner.
Clark: Well, at first, a lot. Well, they just didn't want a woman on the river to begin with. Even on your news reporters and all a little bit at first, a few of them just didn't want to report it. And then it was a woman down.-Laura.-can't think of her last name now.-that was down in Boulder City, and she was a newswoman and she put it on like nothing. She got it on network and all. And they didn't have that trouble, oddly enough, when TV come out, with the first ones even, didn't have that problem. But it was just on some places that couldn't believe it, didn't want to believe it, and just didn't think it was possible when you first talked. And before the dam was in, we must have just known about, they'd look at you like you were crazy, you know, because one time on a plane.-people, we did then, I was on a plane and I was looking down at the Grand Canyon, a woman said, "You're sure interested." And I said, "I should be, I have boats down there." This was before they'd ever heard of them and she looked at me like I was crazy. Then I noticed she didn't talk to me the rest of the trip, so I didn't bother her either. But you had this. And even when I was up here that first time, I started to say, I was out when I was at that Desert View, and somebody was looking at a map and saying, "Oh that point down there, such and such," and I said, "Well, that's Copper Blossom." "How do you know?" And I said, "Because I'm running boat trips down there." And they looked at one another and walked silently away. (laughs) So you got this! Yeah, you got this. And so a lot, too, would think, "You must be dreaming or something." You know at first it was hard to get on, that was the only thing. And I normally didn't pay any attention, because I could see they didn't figure it and didn't know, and they just didn't about it then. And I could see where they was that way, so it didn't bother me any.
Underhill: Have you had any problem over the years with other river runners? Or is that a different sort of group?
Clark: When they first come on, a little bit at first, and they would be somewhat jealous and all this and that, but not since. Oddly enough, over time, it's just the opposite.-I'm friends with almost all of them, and you don't have that in the extreme. Now they just talk about you, "The Old-timer," and that you started all this. And you don't find it in the young ones today like you did originally when a few of the first come on, of you just being there. So now, somehow, they accept it and just point it out and don't seem to mind, you know, the fact.-they just say you're, you know, a living pioneer, and that's the end of it. So they don't seem to mind, and all over there, so I'm good friends with almost any of them, I get along and no problems at all. No, I just don't have any of those occurring. It was just that short time, and a few of the very beginning ones who then wanted to feel they were the only ones or something like this. But not when they come on, and they were just working for somebody. So they thought it was great when it started. So I don't have that at all, as far as they're concerned.
Underhill: I have to throw this one in there, for everybody else, for Laine and Chip, but we wondered, people have told us about you sitting in the Colorado River, and we wondered why you do that and how you're able to sit for so long in that cold water and take people out there with you.
Clark: Oh, because it's good to learn the cold water. It doesn't hurt you actually. And if you ever go off into it or anything, it's better if you're used to it. And then you warm up and you get used to going out into it. It isn't that cold. And you get to going out at noon or anything, it keeps you cool if it's hot at all. So then I start and get so many to go out with me, you know, to take their drink, or a Coke or whatever, just wade out and stand beside the boat. And for a while they timed us for a while. And women take, as you know, more cold than the men because of the way they're built, so women, particularly a lot of women get so they can.-and like it. I mean, not dislike it, but like it. And so it doesn't bother them. It takes men longer, because as they've said, normally it's something about their build and the way they're made that they can't take as much cold. But you do get some of them, even, that don't mind it at all. And it's better if you stay a little used to it. It's just in case you ever need to be used to it, it's a little better.
Underhill: What's the longest you've gone out and sat there, do you know?
Clark: oh I don't know, I don't pay any attention, because oddly enough my thermostat, I guess, works good, because the cold weather doesn't bother me when I go back to Chicago, yet, to a boat show, because I was there in the winter they had the temperature was eighty below with the wind chill factor. And that set the record for all time. And I know I didn't. . . . And I wasn't dressed like other people, because I didn't have boots lined and all, with the heavy lining. And I wasn't dressed as heavy as they are back there, because I was born there, but yet I didn't seem to be suffering as much as they did from the cold either. I mean, that didn't seem to be affecting me as much as it did them. And so then when I get in cold water it don't seem to affect me either, or the heat either one. I mean, in the Canyon I don't run for shade because the heat doesn't bother me. And the same in Las Vegas in the truck and all, because I don't have air conditioning in my warehouse, and I work in the summer and all and it's a hundred and seven, you know, you think nothing about it, because you're thinking about your work, for one thing, and wanting to get it done. And when I had those three days between, you've got to work real fast and hard to get it done. And so your concentration is real heavy on getting it done. Because I am the one who packs the groceries between and all yet, because I like to work. And I have no trouble, and pretty rare do I ever forget anything, because that is one you can't go to the grocery store for. (chuckles) So it's pretty rare, and if you're alone and can really concentrate. But the heat just doesn't bother me, but neither does the cold bother me. So as I said, my thermostat works good. (laughs) But I am very fortunate and I know it. I thank whatever it is every day.-my mother or whatever, I don't know.-but anyhow, for my good health all my life. Because I have to admit that I have never had a headache, and I do drink beer.-I drink beer at night, a couple of beers all the time.-and it's never given me a headache. I just haven't had a headache. I said, "I guess I don't have any brains or something," because I haven't had any. Maybe you have to have brains to have one. (chuckles) Because I never have, as my sister knows. I have never even taken an aspirin, because the first thing I've ever taken is when I went over, and then the dentist wanted me to take this antibiotic for that tooth that I now have that is allright, that he didn't want to pull. And I have never even taken an aspirin, and he knows that. "Well," he said, "this is not anything at all, so it won't bother you." So he coaxed me, wanting me to take it. And he said, "Oh, eventually it will heal up anyhow, but if you get any troubles over there, do it." But I haven't so far. I got the prescription, but I haven't taken it yet, because I have never taken any pills. I never ever took an aspirin, so somehow I just have the feeling I don't want to take any, you know, because I just think you're better off when you don't, particularly me, because I'm not used to anything. So I just think, "Hmm!" (laughs) I haven't taken one so far, I don't think I will yet, either. (laughs) So whatever it is, I thank goodness for, though. I feel so lucky.-when I look at people, when I even look at my boatmen, because a lot of the firemen, they get cancer and those things, forty, forty-five years old! I had one that passed away last year, and he was only around forty-two years old. And I can't understand why so many people are getting these things this day and age. You know, you didn't used to hear of them, or something. I don't know what happens this day and age. But I just thank goodness every time. I just say whatever it is, well, I'm glad. (laughs) You know, whatever it is, I'm just fortunate and glad both.-lucky.-and so I don't feel bad at all that I never aimed for money. I never have. My trips have been reasonable, I've always just got by, I'll still just get by.-particularly if I even get washed out now in the bid and all, why, I'll get by.-just have that confidence. That's the way it is. And it doesn't bother me, because now I'm constantly reminded in one way, that I'm still around because somebody will write and say, "Oh, I just found out you're still running the river." (laughs) You know, they lost contact with me. You know, something like this, "We're too old to go, but we want to have contact with you again, and that you're still running" or something else. You know, they'll be so surprised. So all the time once in a while you get these gentle reminders, you know, "Well, you're still living." Literally speaking, they'll just say, "Oh, you're still living," somebody younger, and I'll say, "Oh, you bet. I'm going to pack dirt in your face!" (laughs) Yeah, usually my return is, "I'm going to pack dirt in your face," is what I kid them about and then that quickly shuts them up and they'll say, "No. . . ." Then a few that know me will say, "You know, I don't doubt it!" A few fellows, particularly. They'll say, "With your health, I almost don't doubt it."
Underhill: Well we will stop here and we look forward to tomorrow morning. And we've really appreciated you sharing your thoughts and remembrances with us today, and we'll do Part Two tomorrow.
Clark: Good! [END TAPE 2, SIDE B]

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GEORGIE CLARK INTERVIEW
This is an interview with Georgie Clark being conducted at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on November 6, 1991 at about 2:20 p.m. I'm Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona University, and we're going to do a life history with Georgie. We'll start with childhood, which seems like a logical beginning.
Underhill: You were born in Chicago on November 13, 1910?
Clark: Right.
Underhill: And do you have earliest memories? Do you remember your early childhood?
Clark: No, I don't have a lot of memories. Oddly enough, of the early childhood, I don't have a whole lot of memories. I had a terrific mother and I evidently didn't have any complaints from my mother, so I just went along in the middle of everything. But strangely enough, I don't have a lot of memories of the early childhood.
Underhill: What kind of person was your. . . .
Clark: The most I have is at home, because in those days, was in Depression days and all, and we were real poor. And so I got a little different start, was all, because my mother.-I didn't have a dad, he just disappeared.-my mother never talked agin [ed: against] him, I just didn't have one. But she always said, "Well, you're on the bottom and everything has to be up." So no crying, because we never did cry, "because," she said, "you'd be crying your life away, because you usually cry for yourself." So that was one thing I remembered, and it's true if you think about it. If you cry for most things, you're only crying for you, so therefore, I never did cry in my life, but it helped me a lot on a lot of things, because then you just don't do it. And the other thing she taught was privacy, because we had one big room, but she was real handy and she set up canvas and made like little self-territories.-then you had a pad on the floor and then just hangers enough for what few clothes you had. And then this pad was yours, and nobody.-not even her.-ever came in it. And so then we never argued either.-she wouldn't stand it. "If you can't be pleasant to one another, it's all we have, why, just go to your pad." And she never touched us, but boy, we knew enough that we were either pleasant or we went to the pad. And as a result, my brother and sister and I never had a word in our life. So I did have a little different start than most people. She didn't send us to church, because her dad had been.-she said "a hypocrite".-had been real heavy on it, so she decided she would let us grow into what we wanted to, and she always talked of one old saying, which still is with me, as you can see, "Do as you be done by." And boy, it works! (laughs) Because if I don't do anything to you I don't want, you won't do anything in life. So that's the only main thing I remembered, was that part of my upbringing, that served me so well, clear to even yet.
Underhill: Did you have something in particular you wanted to be when you grew up?
Clark: I always liked water, but I think this was natural, because living right close to Lake Michigan.-I lived on the near north side.-the only thing you could do when you were poor, is in little gangs you went and swam in Lake Michigan. And you didn't use to have any sand beaches or nothing.-everything was off the rocks. These sand beaches, they were all artificial. A lot of people don't know that to this day, that they're artificial beaches. You used to have to go off the rocks, so you had to get fairly good at swimming. And you used to have a lot of competition between you on who was the best as far as swimming went. So it was kind of natural I'd like water, because it's all I knew. When I even came to California, I was looking for water. And then I found, because I settled in L.A., that the water was miles away.-the ocean. I had thought it'd be like living two blocks away from Lake Michigan, that I could (laughs) just walk to it. (laughs) So I was disappointed at this.
Underhill: Did you have any role models.-heroes or heroines.-when you were growing up?
Clark: No, I didn't, oddly enough, except my mother. I thought she was right, and we all did, for some reason. She was so great that we wanted to please her. Mainly I just thought whatever she did was right. And she didn't ever "down" us. She always said, "Anything you're thinking, do go for it." And believe it or not, when I swam the Grand Canyon and I told her about it, I thought I could swim it.-you know, that Powell had come down, they said nobody come since.-she said, "Oh, if you think you can do it, go for it!" So, see, I always had her backing. The family backed one another. They didn't down you and razz you and say, "You're crazy!" Whatever you wanted to do, why, "go for it!" And that was a big help. You didn't have nobody downing you.
Underhill: What traits would you say you inherited from your mother?
Clark: Well, my mother laughed, because she said, "Well, Dad was from France," he was French, but she's Irish and English. So she said, "That just makes you an alley cat. But remember, alley cats are tough!" (laughs) And she said, "You did inherit terrific health." Because both of them, she said, "Your dad had terrific health," and she sure had health to the very last. She could work clear up. So she had good eyes too.-her own eyes and teeth. So then I figured I would have them, because she had them.
Underhill: Did you inherit any traits from your father that you were ever told about?
Clark: I don't know if I did or not. She didn't say anything agin him, for him, or otherwise. She just said merely, he was sort of a party fellow who should have never been married, and that was all. She didn't talk agin anything. She was upbeat. If you didn't have anything good to say about anything, not to say it. So we had a terrific beginning in that way, that we just didn't have this downbeat or complaining.-we just didn't do it, no matter how rough things were. And at that time, you never knew where your next meal was coming from, because then, women couldn't get jobs. And she hand-ironed in a laundry to raise the three of us.
Underhill: When you were young, did you feel that you were deprived of things, or you had a happy childhood?
Clark: Oh, we seemed to go along beautiful. And our family was so close, we were so tight-knit. And then my sister and I remained tight-knit, and my brother too, all our life. Wherever one went, the other one went. And we were always so tight, and always got along, that it was a little different, you see, otherwise.
Underhill: Your sister Marie seems to have a little different personality. Is your brother different also from both of you?
Clark: Well, my sister was terrific. She had good health, but she just wasn't to the ruggedness like I was. In so many words, I went out for everything.-like she didn't go for the swim[ming] or any of that. And she was always a very high I.Q. to begin with. She had a scholarship to go to college and everything. Teachers offered to help her because she had this very high. . . . And she studied all the time. And we used to call her "the brains," because she was so smart. And she didn't want to be called "the brains," and she'd say, "Well, any one of you could pass your grades just as good if you'd study, but neither one of you ever study." Which Mom said we didn't, she said we just slid through and got medium grades and had no problem. But we didn't ever bring a book home, whereas my sister studied all the time. And she was the smart one, to begin with.
Underhill: Did you like school? Or do you remember your school years at all?
Clark: Somehow I don't remember much about the school years. And I've always marveled at this, as to why. But Mother just said I seemed to go along fine, no problems. But she said I was pretty positive of myself and always did what I wanted anyhow, so it wouldn't have mattered to me, if others approved or didn't, because I.-having to take care of myself from an early age of about four, your hair and everything, so then I didn't want long hair, because I thought it was a pain, you had to spend too much time on it. And even then, this was when little girls all had long hair, and I had mine cut. And she said it must not have bothered me if they teased me about looking like a boy, because I still cut it. (laughs) So she said evidently I just wasn't bothered.
Underhill: How did you come to swim in Lake Michigan? How did you learn to swim?
Clark: Oh, by yourself. Everything then, nobody . . . except watching other kids and all that.
Underhill: Did you swim year-round in Lake Michigan, or not in the winter?
Clark: Later on I did.-they swam in the winter. We didn't have any big clubs like they later had, because the first Polar Bear Club started in Chicago. We didn't have that, because they were right close to a hotel, then they had put sand beaches down and the people that ran the hotel.-because we had to walk home to change our clothes. But they were just a rugged little group that formed our own little.-we didn't call it "polar bear" then, but we just went in the winter. Because we didn't have that then, we just went in the winter on our own, though.
Underhill: Can you tell us what happened after high school? You went to Florida and then New York City?
Clark: Oh, well I had wanted to get a change, because I thought, "Well, there must. . . ." You know, I'd never been out of Chicago. I was just in Chicago, period. So I thought, well, I would try to go somewhere else. But I made an error, not realizing that New York was even bigger. I just thought, "Well, it'll be a change." And so then I got a bus, went to New York. Then I got a job. I had trained in order to do other things. I had worked in lots of nightclubs, because there was no age barrier there. So then I was a cigarette girl and I was real young and I liked to get money when I went to school, because there wasn't an age barrier or anything. Then I went and I learned.-you probably don't know what a "comp" is [comptometer], but it's all figures, and it's before a computer. It dealt with figures only. Only there was no tapes or nothing. And so I learned to do that real good, and that was what they used all the time in big companies before the event of the computers. And then by changing jobs a lot.-because I was always restless, that I was.-then I was real good at it. You used to have to pass tests, both in written and on the machine. And I could pass them like nothing. So I got in Radio City real quick and worked on a comp operator there. So that was all right, because I was lucky to work then, because the Depression, remember. But that's what caused my biking, because then I walked up to Central Park. Of course I was young at that time, and I leaned over the fence and watched the seven-day bike riders. They used to have them that rode in the bowls for money and they was real popular. And I looked, I had never.-couldn't afford a bike, never been on one. And so they come over, "Want to ride?" And I said, "Well, I never been on a bike in my life. I'd like to, but I don't know anything about it." "Well, we'll teach you." So then they met me and took me over to where they had truck stops, and they were always down.-they're down real hard, and then up at that point. So then they put me on this racer bike and there are no brakes on it, you know. Your feet were tied in tight, and then they give you a shove. Well, down went fine, but I'd always crash and it was all brick coming up. I was so black and blue! (laughs) But I did learn to balance. And so then we talked and they said I came to the wrong place, you know. I wanted something different than this big city life, because that's all I know. They said, "Why didn't you go to California?" And I said, "Ha! Big deal! Now how do I get there in Depression?" And I had one week's salary coming in and I said, "Be impossible." And they said, "Oh, not with you," they said. "You're pretty tough, we've been watching you." And they said, "You can take it and you can eat at farmhouses on the way out and you can ride out there and you can average at least a hundred miles a day the way you are when you get used to it. And you'll make it out there." And I said, "Well, great, but I don't have a bike." "We'll give you one." "Well," I said, "I need another one, because," I said, "my brother is here." And at that time, I was actually married and he couldn't get work, but you didn't dare say you're married then, or you couldn't get a job, because women that were married then didn't get a job, because the Depression in that day. So then I always called him "brother." So anyhow, then he said, "We'll give you two of the training bikes." "Okay." So then I went home with two bikes to the tenement home, I say, but anyhow, this tenement place, and I said, "We, when I get my salary this Friday, are going to ride to California." "What?!" And I said, "At least, I am, and you can't stay here when you're not working."
Underhill: And this was Harold? That was your husband?
Clark: So that's what we started on then. I had that one week's little salary and we started out of New York on those bikes. And we didn't have anything like sleeping bags or nothing. We just had to sleep in a culvert or whatever you had. And we didn't carry anything, because we didn't have anything to amount to anything. We sent what few clothes we had, just so that we could pick them up in California, sure we was going to get there, and started out. And then we had brick for five hundred miles, clear into the.-I forget what hills you call those.-terrible five hundred miles of it. And then I found my legs were in good condition from so many stair climbing, but sitting down on that little hard seat.-boy! I mean, the second and third day I rode standing up (laughs) until I got used to sitting down. And then I was okay then.-I started to gain what strength you need, because no gears or nothing, remember. And so I started gaining. Then the roads weren't wide, so then on Sundays it was kind of bad. And when I got out West, and as we kept coming, and we rode.-it got to so we could ride everything, and we did stop at farmhouses. And then you didn't have to be personally afraid. People weren't going to hit you in the head because you had lots of company.-everybody was in Depression. That was 1936 and everybody was there.-practically everybody. And so you didn't fear for your life. Like now, you couldn't do this too easy. But then you could do it and people helped you if you went and offered to work or to pay.-you know, whatever they would give you in a farmhouse.-you could do it. And then you just stopped and bathed in any creeks you saw or anything. And I had never seen anything like a desert or nothing. And I come over through Flagstaff, believe it or not. And the old Highway 66 for a while and then down through there. And then I went the old Needles Grade, because that's the only road there was. And when I got in Flag[staff] though, I liked to froze.-it was in August, but to me it was real cold somehow, that air. Then we got down towards San Berdino [ed: San Bernardino] and then they had a big sign "Grape Pickers Wanted," and I had never got the grapes I wanted, because they were expensive, anywhere I'd ever been, so I said, "Oh, good, let's go up and tell them we're experienced." So we went up, "Experienced?" "Oh, yes!" And we were tanned.-everybody out there was Mexicans working. And we said, "Oh, sure," you know. They didn't ask nothing. And so they throw us this sharp blade.-it's a handle and this curved blade, you know. And I'm looking at it, and they pay you so much a box. So we go out and we just watched the other Mexicans, how they were doing it. (laughs) And all that kind of thing. Make it more interesting, I got to racing him.-I could do more than he could. And then I shouldn't have did it, but I put some leaves in the bottom of mine to lift them up, so I would win! Then when I first went out there, the only thing they give you is wine.-you had to buy your own lunch. So when I had looked, why, boy, they'd drink a glass of wine like this, and I thought, "Gee, how disgusting!" I'd watched you in nightclub just sipping, you know. But after I worked out there a couple of days I could do that too! (laughs) So I didn't judge anybody from there on, until you tried it. And then it wasn't coming out, I think we was practically eating more than we was making. So I said, "I don't think this is going to come out, we'd better move on." So then we did.
Underhill: How did you cross the desert?
Clark: Yeah, we went on the desert. We didn't have a spare tire. Ignorance is bliss sometimes. We just didn't know anything. We didn't have enough water even! We'd never seen anything like that. Remember, I was strictly been in the big town.-and there was Chicago, and then what little I was in New York. And I had never been out. A vacant lot to me looked like the country, you know, because I just didn't see them. And so I didn't know. I just went. We just went. And we were lucky, because then there was only the Indians out there. There wasn't the stops you get now in the desert. And that was that old grade through Needles. It was something! Going up through there, I don't know how many have ever been on it now, but that is really something. And I'd never seen a desert. Somehow luck was just with us, because we just survived, you know. And then of course, little or no food because there was no rest stop and we hadn't carried anything with us, or water either.
Underhill: How did your husband do on the trip? Did he complain a lot?
Clark: Well, he was strong. No, he was very strong, very strong-legged and all, so he was real good when it come to anything that way physically. He just was that way and young at the time and had a very good appearance, even for that time, because he was real clean-looking and all, so his appearance was a help, actually, because he just had that "clean" look to him. No, he did real fine. Anything like that didn't bother him at all. So it was real good. He took it fine when he was out. At first he didn't think.-you know, he just thought, "Boy, you've never rode." He had rode a little, but I had never rode. So he didn't know how I was going to make it, because of having never rode, you know. But you just get used to it. When I see now these twenty-two gears on a bike (laughs) you can imagine how I'm looking at them. Twenty-two gears! Because you never heard such a thing now. Then we had down to our last quarter, and we tossed it to see if we would try to get to San Frisco [ed: San Francisco] or to Los Angeles. And it was Los Angeles. So then we spent that last quarter for a waffle between us.-you'd get one for a quarter then. So then we went into L.A. and then we picked up our clothes, because they'd been paid for to get there. Then I always had this diamond.-and believe it or not, the same one was in a ring, and his mother had give it to me early, and it's only a half-carat, but it's a good one. And then you could pawn it, even then, for seventy-five dollars, which then was pretty good money, I mean, to make you last. So the first thing I did when I got there was go to a pawnshop and pawn it. And then I knew I could get.-I could always work somehow, even in Depression. I could get work because I'd do anything I could do, and I am a worker and I always have been a worker, even to this day, whatever it is. And so I'll take anything.-it doesn't have to be one thing, until I can get another. So I did get work right away. So then I was looking for water, however, because of course we were so far from the water. But we had to ride the bikes to water if we were going to get to the water. (laughs) All the way to Venice, which is a little ways out from where we were in L.A.
Underhill: And when was your daughter born?
Clark: In 1929.
Underhill: So she was born in Chicago then?
Clark: Uh-huh.
Underhill: And where did the name Sommona come from? I've wondered about that.
Clark: Well, Sommona Rose.-we lived in the midst of a lot of French in Chicago. Then my maiden name was DeRoss, which I went by a lot, yet, when I was working.-because then you didn't have, at that time.-Social Security was coming out, but I didn't have that yet. It wasn't.-everybody didn't pick it up. So I used to use the single name a lot, since I passed as a single. And Sommona..I thought, well, it was pretty, you know, if she wanted to use Clark. But that Sommona Rose.-I just always thought it was a beautiful name. So I just automatically named her. But then of course she was so blonde, she was taffy-colored and blue eyes. And then later I said, "Sommona, that don't match you. We can change your name if you want." But she liked that name so well she didn't want to change it. But anybody from that name would think they was going to see somebody dark, and here (laughs) was a taffy-colored blonde, you know. (laughs) And so she didn't want to change it. And of course she was young with me, so we run together so much. And she was real strong. She could do everything, six years old on up, why, we were like peas in a pod. So then California we did a lot of skiing and mountain climbing and what-have-you.
Underhill: Did she have some of the same characteristics that you do?
Clark: She had everything, just exact. And for all he [Harold] had the strength, he wasn't as much that way. So we simply agreed to disagree, and so then we went our separate ways after we were out there. And of course, probably because I was with her so much and he didn't care for all that stuff. We were just that way and he wasn't.
Underhill: So in the late thirties, then, up until World War II what did you do to support yourself in Los Angeles?
Clark: I did different things: I got into office work again on comp work. In fact, I got on at Sears and they took all the figures there to send into Chicago, for the sales every day. The only thing I didn't like was some fellow standing over you, waiting on you to give him the figures. And there's no tape on this. If you make error, why, it's just bad. (laughs) Because, you know, just run your fingers like this, you could. I used to tell him, "If you would just go sit down, I could do a lot better than standing on my shoulder." (laughs) We got along good, because I didn't have much trouble. Oddly enough, I didn't have much trouble, when it come to work.
Underhill: And how did you become interested or get involved with the Ferry Command in World War II?
Clark: Oh, I worked at different things. As I said, I was always restless. For some reason, I could work and yet I always was changing jobs. I was plain restless. That was the only bad thing I did, is, I didn't stay at jobs. As soon as I could turn around, I was looking for something, I didn't know what, but I was looking. (laughs) Just looking. And I come back to Chicago once in 1938 and worked and then went back again. And then was out there. And then I heard about the Ferry Command. So that sounded real interesting. My mother said, "Go for it." And she said, "Marie and I will take care of Sommona. And go for it, by all means, because you'll never get to fly otherwise." So see, again, it was their help. So then I saved enough money. You had to have thirty-five hours, then, to put in your application. So I went out.-the War was on.-I went out to Quartzsite, which was nothing then.-now they have Pow-Wows, they have a lot of people there, but there was nothing then. And then they had one little store and they had the flying out there, because you couldn't fly too close into a town. And they just had these little old Cubs and it was real hot. I went in August because it was real cheap then, because a lot didn't want to go in August because you couldn't do any precision flying. About all you could do when you got up there was spin. They taught spins then. And so that was what I did, mostly, was spins, once you got up there, because you couldn't do anything else. And these Cub planes.-and I didn't know the difference.-again, ignorance is bliss.-I didn't know the difference, and gee, the oil would spill on the windshield and all this kind of thing. You'd have to look out the side of these little Cubs and then the altimeter didn't work and you'd level off with a five hundred foot mountain. I didn't know any better! And so I thought that's the way it was. (laughs) So then I got my thirty-five hours and then my daughter was so well-liked out there.-she was about thirteen, and I took her with me, it wasn't during school. She got to go up and down between everybody, so she could really land better than I could. And then being young, she just got everything like nothing. So then when I soloed, they didn't pay no attention to anything then, so I went up once and landed and then she come running out and crawled in and I let her do the other two! (laughs) And so then I got into the Ferry Command. I wasn't sure, because thirty-five was the age limit, and I was thirty-four. And I was just holding my breath, and then I had to put down, because they check you to a "fair thee well" of course, because you're going into flying. Even then, you really got a check. So I knew I had to put down "daughter," and everything else.-"divorced" and what-have-you. And I thought, "Oh boy, I'll probably will never (laughs) get in." But I did! Much to my surprise, too. And so I was thrilled to death then. And I got in, but I got in so late that I got to training, but I didn't get to work at it. They finished you up, I got the training, but I didn't get to work. And I had just passed it, I was going to get to go on the helicopters.-which I somehow wanted the helicopters right away. So I never got to helicopters. That's one thing I didn't get that I wanted in my life badly, was flying the helicopters. Even today, when I fly helicopters quite a bit in the canyon, going out at Whitmore [Mile 188], why, I still would like to fly a helicopter. (laughs) Because I never did get it and I was so close, but so far. And so that was the way on that one. But I didn't get to make use of this flying. They had a little club for a while called "The Feefanola [phonetic spelling] Club," but it was mostly wealthy women. And if I went in, I was just chiselling on them and they took me because I could fly so good, because they used to fly in pairs, and they would have a lot of games and stuff and I was good to be on their team, because I could fly good. But yet I was the one who didn't have anything, so I dropped out because I thought, "This is no good, for me being the only one that doesn't have anything. It's just no good at all." So I told them I just felt that way, that I couldn't afford, you know, what they had, or nothing. So I dropped through on that then. And then they didn't have little planes anywhere. They didn't have them any place, so that you couldn't keep up with it. It had been too expensive, and they didn't have like around here.-everywhere is planes.-but not then! (chuckles) You didn't see them. So I dropped out. Then I found various work again. And as I said, but still was looking for something. Then even more-so now, because a regular job after flying was pretty boring. So I'm still looking, and I don't know what for. Then my daughter and I was out biking when it ended, and I came back and then that's when she got killed. We were out biking out on 101, because we rode to Santa Barbara one day and back the next when I was off work, and we got hit by a drunk driver. He was in uniform. He slowed and I yelled.-I had run after the car and I said, "Well, she's hurt. Will you wait and we'll get her to a hospital?" Because I wasn't hurt. But she was singing a song and it quit right there. And I was afraid she was dead. But anyhow, I wanted to get her to a hospital. So then I started back. He said, "Yes." And I could see he'd been drinking, and somehow I memorized his number. But I got back and then he just took off. So anyhow then, then I caught.-another fellow come up in a Jeep, and I told him the number of the car, but it took off. I said, "Because I'm going to forget it, I'm afraid, if I try to think it much longer," because I knew she was dead. So then he took over, called the morgue, because there was no use to call anything different. So she was still so warm I couldn't believe she was dead. I had them check to be sure, and just came back. But then at that time, when the trial come up, because everything was in for the poor person going overseas, they felt sorry, and I said, "Oh, well," you know, "forget it, then." Because it wouldn't bring her back anyway, and all it got me with that one was what my mother had taught me, and still was living and taught me, is that you cry for yourself, because she's out of it. The song quit in the middle, she doesn't know anything. But you, of course, will always miss her. So, see, the training come in very good. And of course I had the job to call them [her family] and tell them. And remember, she was as close to them as she was to me, really, because they had had her all the time when I went to Ferry [Command] and all this stuff. So then she was so close and so well loved, so that that part was real hard, and hard for me, because I'd had her companionship so long. But that was when, then, I found the Colorado River. It was afterwards a friend of mine took me on Lake Mead and I come up and I looked up the Canyon and wanted to know what's up there, because a whole lot of driftwood [was] coming down. He [Harry Aleson] said, "Oh, nobody ever runs that, it's the Colorado River, except," he said, "I read the Powell book, the Day of Powell." And I said, "Well, somebody run it, it can be run for sure." And he said, "Well, that was the way it was." So then he hiked and everything, so I thought, "Hmm," because I thought about, figuring I'm sure I can swim anything. So I said to him, "Let's go up and hike into various parts of that canyon and with a life preserver, I'm sure that I can make it." So I talked him into it finally.
Underhill: And this was Harry Aleson?
Clark: Uh-huh. And I talked him into it, I have to admit. So then we hiked in. Then we went in [at Parashant Wash], but we got separated right off the bat. And then the water, oddly enough, took us by where we could grab our hands again, because then that was when I learned.-I didn't know anything about the river, remember. I didn't know backwater from nothing. But I learned fast, because I had to. And so then that's when we got a wrist lock so we could hang on to one another. And then in the old days, you had terrific whirlpools, and the very first night, we got in a whirlpool. It took us down the third time, and then your breathing is getting short and then we come up. It threw us out of the whirlpool. So then it was close-in to a narrow break-down and I grabbed a rock and it took us quite a while to get up because you lose your strength. But we finally did get up. And then of course you're cold all night because you just sit there in the life preserver because you don't dare take it off, because it was on such a little narrow break-down. And then all we had taken had been dehydrated soup and candy and coffee. The first coffee came out in little bitty cans, dehydrated. And we would dump the can and pick up water and there'd be lots of wood from seeing it from the bottom all that driftwood.-there'd be lots of wood.-but there was no wood where we was. The water was up.-it was, I guess, now we're guessing, but we think seventy thousand.-and there was no driftwood up where I was. The river was full of it, but you can't use wet driftwood. [END TAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]
Clark: So then we couldn't make it far. And you can't eat dehydrated soup. That's impossible! So then all we had was the candy, which is all right, because I had never eat that much, so that didn't bother me. And Harry had been gassed in the war [WWI?] and he didn't eat very much. So for us it wasn't as bad as it sounds, because we weren't used to a whole lot.
Underhill: And this was 1945, the summer of 1945?
Clark: In 1945, uh-huh. And then I got him to go in 1946 to go up the Canyon further. And then he about drowned. I didn't somehow, but he did. Well, he couldn't take the cold.-the cold just got to him. We didn't use anything, remember, and that was snow water coming down real fast. And he just froze and shook so bad and his teeth chattered. I was cold, but not like him, because he had been gassed in World War I. And so then he said, "Don't you ever say 'swim' to me again, because I'm not going! I'm going to shoot you if you mention it!" And I said, "Don't worry, I won't." Because he come so close, that I didn't want to be responsible. And then unknown to anybody that I did go up and then knew I could go into Phantom and that I did go down. There was nobody around at that time but myself.-just to get in that much. But then I had no problem but myself. Because remember, I was born on swimming. And Lake Michigan is rough, if you don't know it. It's wild rough and it comes out way over the Outer Drive. And a lot of times the water there is that rough.-it comes up over their beaches and clear over their outer drives.
Underhill: Do you think that going to the Colorado River helped you cope with your daughter's death?
Clark: Oh, naturally. You learn that river.-I mean, boy, you knew it. When you do a thing like that, in those days, you sure knew it. So then when you got. . . . Then I had a ten-man boat and come down, the first thing I got was a surplus boat like the one you see. And boy, I thought I had the Queen Mary under me, because I'd never had all that air before. (laughs) So when anybody said, "aren't you afraid I had this one fella," and I said, "Are you kidding?" You know, with all this air under me, if I hang onto the boat at all, why man, I've got plenty. I got one fellow to go with me, called Elgin Pierce [in 1952]. He passed away last year, as it so happens. I could send you a picture, too, because he's the first fellow that went through this in an aluminum boat. I still have a picture of that, a couple of extra. I'll send that to you. I'll try to write it down and try to remember to send it to you. Because then he went down with me. But I wasn't inclined to portage after swimming. I just said, "Oh, you know, if you hang on you upset" because we had practiced getting the ten-man over, because two people can do when you don't have much luggage.-you can get it back over in the calm water and just go ahead. And I said, "Well, it'll just be simpler to, you know, to go ahead and let it upset and hang on and then crawl back, get it over and crawl in it." But I had forgot he wasn't that good a swimmer and wasn't that good at it. So he was having a hard time (laughs) and he got separated from me in one spot and then did get up. But he said nevermore on that one again.
Underhill: Were you afraid at all on that first swim with Harry?
Clark: No, strangely enough, being born, somehow like I was, in Chicago I was a fatalist. And that again was my mother.-she was a fatalist, because she definitely thinks when your time comes, that's it, whether you're at home, going down the stairs.-anything. You know, because so many get killed in those big towns all the time in tenement districts anyhow that you can get killed there as well as anywhere. And so that as a result I was just a fatalist. You know, if you believe in yourself and you know what you can do and can't.-I was not foolhardy. I mean, in so many words, I wasn't going to commit suicide, but I just believed I could do anything enough. I figured I can hike out of the Canyon, because then I had really good legs, and I can hike out if I have to, anywhere I'm sure. I felt positive on my swimming. Remember, I had swam all my life at that time. And I felt very positive about the swimming, that I could hold for an awful long time. If you didn't, why, it was supposed to be your time.
Underhill: Are you afraid of anything?
Clark: Yes, when somebody else drives me on a freeway! (laughs) I was asked that same question by Art Linkletter. I was on his program and he said, "Aren't you afraid of anything?" And I said, "Oh, you bet! I'm afraid of anybody driving me on the freeway.-particularly if they want to give me a thrill, because," I said, "I don't want accidents which cripple you up. I am afraid, I don't want [to be] crippled. I don't mind death, because the way I think that is, is instant, or at least close to instant, and you're out of it. But I don't want crippled, because of the way I like to do things, crippled I don't want.-under no condition. Because of the way I'm set up and all, why, I wouldn't go for it." So I said, "That's something I just don't want." So I said, "Anything where people drive crazy, I'd rather drive my own car." Which is true, still even today, almost. On a freeway, I prefer to drive myself. (laughs) I have confidence in me. And then I always have a lucky star. And I always thought, being a fatalist, that I did have so much luck, too. For some reason, I just seemed to have luck. My daughter just didn't have it, see. When she was hit on the bike, she let go of the handle bars, and the fellow had a rear view mirror on each side. She was on the inside, and normally this would be safe, but she hit the rear view mirror at the base of the brain.-it killed her instantly. And normally I'd have been the one which would have got hooked by a car, you know, but he drove so far over and it hooked her. And I got hit on the front, but all I got was a stiff back out of it, because I got right up and everything. The wheels were locked together. And so I just seemed to be. . . . I have all my life just seemed to be, have a lucky star. My mother and sister always said that. And when my brother went on the Grand, he went about three times, but he had trouble with single boats then, and he upset and he got tangled in some rope and took some water and everything. And he said, "I'm going to hike in the Canyon, but," he said "I'm not going to come down the Canyon too much in these boats," he said. "You won't drown, but I will." He said, "You're half fish and I don't have your lucky star." He said, "You just have luck on everything." But I always have had. I've been in quite a lot of car accidents with other people, which I didn't want to be but was, where they'd get hurt seriously and somehow I only come out with something on my forehead. Somehow I'd always hit the windshield.-in the old days, of course, they cracked. And then I cut my forehead and face, which was bad because I had so many scars for a while I looked like Scarface Al! (laughs) I had scars all over me. But that was all, it seemed like.
Underhill: Did you have close calls early on when you were doing this by yourself?
Clark: In the Canyon?
Underhill: yes.
Clark: Not that it seemed to me. I didn't think they were, because of course I'm used to water and these single boats and being in the water didn't mean anything to me. As far as I was concerned, being in the water didn't mean anything, because I was used to that.
Underhill: Can you tell us then, you began running the river with a ten-man raft and then you started working on the idea for the "G-boat"?
Clark: Yeah, I rowed the ten-man raft for up until 1955. Then I couldn't get people, and I had a single, then I put the three together. But when I put three of them together, they could run so good, because on those little ten-man like that one of the surplus, one would come on top of the other one. But the people would only put their feet down, shove it back over, and no danger at all to them. And it just worked so good and they were so tough that nothing seemed to happen. And I used those on all my exploratory trips: In Mexico I had the dam turn loose on me, and boy, you got turned every way but right-side up. Even in those, you were just everyway. And if I'd had any boat but those surplus, I'm sure that the other people.-again, I would say "not me".-but I would say that the others would have be on it, because you're not that used to water, because it was something when that dam turned loose right that close on top of us and the rest of the way. Because that was quite a thing that happened.-it's quite a long story. So they was so good. But when they changed to those little lighter boats that you had to buy, then they didn't do that. Instead of turning up on the other one, they would turn under, no matter how you tied them. Well, that wasn't so good, because then it wasn't working, so I quit having them about four years ago, because I didn't want to row single boats.-it takes so long now that you have so much smooth water is why I object. And the demand is for faster trips as a whole. So then I went to, oh, what we call a single.-one boat, two pontoons, that the other fellows run. And then I have always run the G-boat which is the three big ones together. That's what I put together in 1955. But that was a long exploratory, because first I pulled one back.-I learned I had to.-and then I had to go on the outside to get the motor, and it was so far out because these had bottoms on them then and I had to have somebody hold my ankle while I'd pull a motor up when I wanted to pull it up. Then when you bailed, it was like bailing the lake, you know. I mean, because you'd have so much water, and if they bailed one side and didn't get the other bailed, then that was so heavy that that's the way you'd go down the river, would be that side forward. So you learned so much in those years as far as boats went. And so then I had Disney with me, no less, and I had this ranger I told you about.-Davis, Dan Davis.-who was our first ranger who went down, and then he went with me, got permission to go, and this was a charter trip with this fellow and his wife only, and only Dan Davis and myself and one helper. And Dan was to help him, only. And then the other fellow was to just be what I needed. And then Dan was to do the cooking and all for him, thank goodness, because looking at him I figured I didn't want to cook for him, because, you know, just it was his attitude and all, he was German and real bossy and all, and thought, "Oh-oh!" So Dan Davis was going to be it. He took the Dutch oven and all this bit. [Ernst] Heiniger was his name. People here would remember, that set up the museum and all, because I did take the fellow who set up the museum. I can't think of his name real quick, but I took him down, too, on his first trip, that put that boat in [at the NPS Vistors' Center]. And so then that was how that came about. But anyhow, then I cut the bottoms out on that trip because I went down and had the three boats, and just the one fellow helping me. But you had to wait two, three days at places. Well then there was so much silt in those days, and then somehow the middle boat, I didn't know what was happening, because the two kept coming up higher and the boat kept getting smaller on the middle boat. And I thought, "Something's happening, I'm not sure what." So then when he had to wait he said, "Oh, we're going to have to wait here three days because I got the hummingbird's nest and we're going to do this and that." Okay, so then I said to my helper, "Unfortunately we're going to have to take this tube up, unstring it, and see what's happening to us. Because I'm not sure, when the tubes keep coming in and that keeps popping up, what's happening." And then when we got the tube up, guess what? The silt had come in the back where I had tried to cut it out to put the motor on the inside, and it hadn't got sealed tight. So then the silt would come up in and the water would drain out, but not the silt. So then it had silt up to here, solid. And that was sinking the boat in the middle. It was pulling the tubes together! (laughs) So the most we could do then, we had a shovel, and that was hard as it could be. We had to pour water on it and get some of it out before we could get anywhere near the bottom and I said, "Well, the time is coming, I don't know what's going to happen either." And I had no idea what the boat would do. I didn't know if it would spread way out like this. I didn't have any idea what it would do. And so I said, "We've got to cut this bottom. And then I got rope enough that we can put it under that tube and hope it holds the boat together so that the boat can't do this on us. Instead of doing this way, it's going to do that. See, I didn't know these things then. And so then that's what we did. That was the first bottom that was ever cut out, completely. I had already cut the rear out, thinking I could fix that front to where it wouldn't leak, but that was my error.-I couldn't. So now I cut the front out and got this thing up on the rope that I had. So then it went the rest of the way and it worked so much better that I thought, "Hmm, why have I got a bottom in the others?" (laughs) So then I cut all the bottoms out and that's where your boat comes that they run yet today, that everybody runs.-a single boat, because you have them made this way, with the bottoms out, and for the motor in the back, and then the two tubes. So it's identical except a smaller version, of still what I have on my other boats.
Underhill: And why did you put the motor on the inside?
Clark: Oh, we couldn't afford to have the motors on the outside.-it'd hit everything. You hit the rocks and all. And I only had a ten-horse motor to begin with in the beginning, and with three big boats, what a laugh this was, in seventy, ninety thousand [cubic feet per second]. I mean, you couldn't do anything. You had driftwood you couldn't run it most of the time. Anyhow, you couldn't do anything in fact. And so it was a lot of potluck. All you mainly needed was a good strong heart, and be sure that you felt you could get off of anything you got on.-because you got on lots of rocks. Then they had wood on a lot of these rocks that would cut your boat and all kind of stuff like that would happen, so you took a lot of potluck. You just went, and just figured you'd get off somehow. And so that helped me up good, that I always figured I'd get off one way or the other. I'd just say, "Oh, well, not going to sit here forever.-we'll get there somehow." I used to tell people when we first went in the big boat, "Well, we'll get through somehow." And they got strainers on the dam (laughs) which didn't give them much encouragement. But somehow those big boats, people came right away. Then I started to get some people. There was something about the size of them. And believe it or not, in Chicago I was going to the Cow Palace.-I was the only one that had river trips then, people didn't know anything about it.-so then in order to try to get people I took one of them big boats up, believe it or not, because this was a rascal to take it all the way up there and blew it up so people could see what it looked like. (laughs) It was one of the old surplus boats at that time. It was quite a job to get that up in there and then blown up and all that goes with it, you know. But then I started to get people when I said, "Well, it hasn't upset so far." Then as it kept going, it didn't upset and I, like now can say safely, it can't upset.-at least it never has in a hundred twenty-five thousand [cfs], ninety or nothing, at all.-it just don't upset. You have to hang on, however. And this is clear up, or clear through that you have to hang on good. You have to hang on to your ropes good.
Underhill: I've heard a term: a "Georgie sandwich." Do they [the boats] still make a Georgie sandwich?
Clark: Well, they don't make a sandwich now. A lot of people going down don't understand. When I go through Crystal now, and you go up and the whole wave takes you up, the water.-you have to know your water.-people through just don't know anything about water at all; all they know is there's a lot of it. So then when you go like this [perpendicular to the river, against a wall], they think that the (coughs) one boat is just coming up, when it isn't.-it's going like this and the people up here looking down on you. If you see how the boats are tied, it's impossible and always has been for big boats to go on the other one. Now little boats could make a sandwich.-when I had these little ten-man, then they could come up and go flat. But the big boats could never come up, only a certain little ways, because if you could see how they're tied, it's impossible. It's just impossible. But people still think that one is coming to the other one when you go up on this wave, because they're up so high looking down on the other people here who are down in this trough and this wave is up like this and they're in that trough so they think it's coming on them.-it isn't. Because when I show them it's impossible, then even they can see it couldn't happen. You'd have to tear so many rings off you couldn't do it. Not the way the water is now. But when I go through Crystal or something once in a while, they do. Because I got Suzanne, who's in charge of River Days here, to go, and took her through.-[like] Dan Davis. So I've been taking some of the rangers through. (laughs) And having real good runs with them. Suzanne admitted she was kind of scared, because she had been down, and then she had went with Tom [Workman, a ranger] from Lee's Ferry, and they were practicing rowing and all, and somehow in Bedrock he got on the wrong side of Bedrock and then the water came up. Normally when he's alone, he got on through. So this time he got on the wrong side and he thought, "Oh, well, the water will come up and we'll be okay." But this didn't happen and the boat upset. So then that kind of scared her to death. So when she came with me, she admitted she was pretty scared, in a way, of water. She said, "I'm just going on the faith that because you take all these people that I could hardly say 'no' when you've got all these kids on board." I had a bunch of kids. She said, "With all those kids," (laughs) "I can't say 'no,' you know, when you've got a bunch of. . . ." Which I do, I always take the kids, because it's safe. You're not going to upset. And the kids, oddly enough the kids hang on, they have no weight, and you don't have any problems with the kids. I take them down, you know, four and six years old, don't have any problem. Nobody else takes them under twelve. And I don't have a bit of problem with them. In fact I have quite a few family groups now. The ones I get, of course, have been used to going, so the kids are not normal kids that have nothing more to do than fight one another. They usually are darned good kids. They're really good and they amuse theirself at night building sand castles and what-have-you. And I just don't have any bad luck with them at all, is the odd thing. And I don't mind taking them through rapids, because you tell them to hang on, they just do.
Underhill: Too scared to let go!
Clark: And if I see them not even thinking about it, why then I would put a rope on them and tie them in, because your boat doesn't upset. But gee, they're good as far as I'm concerned.-no problems.
Underhill: To back up just a little bit, how did you come up with the name "Royal River Rats"?
Clark: Well, in the old day I went on lots of other rivers: I went on the Cataract and the Glen. And then if they just wanted to be at [Lake] Powell, I came from Green River, Wyoming. Although I never thought too much about the rivers above Cataract, because they didn't have the rapids, and I like rapids, and admitted, being a restless nature and liking thrills.-I did like thrills.-and naturally restless, that I didn't think so much about a lot of that smooth water, even in the big water day, why, some of that was kind of smooth up there. And I didn't care for it. But I did go up there sometimes if they kept yipping. Why then I would go up there in early.-I'd go up there usually in March and start. I know the one time we had snow right on the river and people were getting their sleeping bags (laughs). And these are little boats you had to take up there at that time to get started to get through some of the things. But they were so cold. But I ran the Cataract, and we called these people just regular river rats, because I was trying to get them on the Grand. Then we had special things that we'd give them when they were Grand Canyon Royal River Rats that they were "royal." Then we used to initiate everybody who went through the Grand Canyon, which nobody does any more. And a lot of people liked it, because now they repeat and bring a friend and they just have a fit if I don't initiate their friend.
Underhill: Can you describe the initiation?
Clark: Because they like it, yeah. So I had to have a special initiation. I had a nurse, too, that went, and her doctor friend had went and had this on his wall.-used to give these plaques, they'd get them up on wood and all, a certificate they'd put up. And he just loved it, so she wanted one too. And so she said, "Well, I want that, and I want initiated too." So I said, "Okay." (laughs) So she was our night's amusement. We initiated her. (laughs)
Underhill: And what kinds of things do you do at your initiation?
Clark: Oh, it's simple, actually. A lot of people used to laugh.-it is educational, because we blindfold them and then we lead them around over hill and dale, but watch and they can't fall because they've got two hands front and back. And we'll tell them, well, your flashlight went out and you didn't bring extra and you're trying to find the toilet or you're trying to find the water or something. And so they stumble around and it's real eerie when you get blindfolded and really can't see. Anywhere out there when there's rocks and all, you've got to lift your feet high and what-have-you. And we do little things like that. We'd take them down, sit them down. Then we'd throw some cold water on them and tell them that's just to clear their memory. And we'll tell them, "Now, this is educational. If you give the right answer, you don't get no water. If you give the wrong answer, then you -get a bucket of water." So then we would ask them, starting at the first rapid.-because we tell them the rapids as they come through, and we tell them if Powell named it, if there's any stories connected to it. And then we tell them the camps at night.-you're supposed to make note and you're supposed to remember where you're at now. You know, and these things, because when you get initiated in the old day, you're going to have to know these things. And different formations.-at least the color of the rock and a few things or where it's at, what rapid. You're supposed to know a few of these things. So then we'd start and we'd go right to the end of the line. We used to have a big line, of course, of the people, and we'd start and go down the line. So they didn't have to know everything, they just had to know whatever they got when you got at them, that hit them. And if they didn't give the right answer, we threw water at them and then went to the next person. We'd tell them the right answer and then go to the next person. And if anybody else answered when they shouldn't have.-because you're only supposed to answer when you tap them on the head.-then you'd throw water on them too, because they'd get anxious and be answering if you didn't watch them! Then after you did this, then at that time, people then were a little tougher.-you wouldn't do it now.-but you did it then, just automatically. You'd crack an egg on their head and give them a crown and take a picture and tell them they're going to take the oath. And we'd wash it off so it wouldn't stick in their hair, however. And this was always did in an afternoon when it was warm.-not at night.-but when the sun was out and the cold water felt good. And then we laid them over and a couple would bring them over and would say, "Oh, this person wants to be a Royal River Rat. They've come through the Canyon and they've been through the tests and everything." And so then they kneeled down in front of me and so I'd tell them different things and I'd say, "Well, on the river, you know, by this time, that no matter what happens to you, the main thing that you must learn is a slogan that everything is just the way you like it." And I said, "Now, if you agree, you say 'yes,' when I nudge you on top." I always had a stick or something, I nudged them, "Well, you say 'yes," and then all will be well." So then when you would tell them this, then even if they did say yes, then you'd whack them with a paddle. You had them kneeling down, so you'd hit them.-not hard.-but you'd hit them with a paddle. Then you'd raise them up and take their blindfold off. And then if it was a girl, the fellows would kiss her, and if it was a man, the women would kiss him. (laughs) Then he was a Royal River Rat. And then we usually give them blackberry [liquer] at night. We had a blackberry cordial was our traditional drink, and always was for a long time, at night, because it goes good in coffee, tea or cocoa. And I had it first in first aid, believe it or not, and I had a fellow along who kept wanting to have it at night, and I said, "No way, it's first aid for medicinal purposes." The last night he said, "Let's bring this out and I'll show you how to use it." So I did and then he put it in everybody's coffee, tea and cocoa and they were crazy about it because they was wet. So then I started having the stuff. I'd have one bottle, two bottles, and pretty soon, it was just tradition. Everything I do comes because of something occuring or something happening. Everybody asks me why I changed from black shorts to the leopard skin and I said, "I used to wear a red top and then it always had a grease spot on it when I went to motors and my sister hated this because she said, "You never look clean." So I went home one day and she had bought the whole outfit.-the bathing suit, the pants, everything.-so I couldn't say I didn't have it.-of the leotards and the leopard skin. And the stretch type. She made sure the legs were loose enough that it wouldn't hinder my action and I couldn't find no excuses. So then I started to wearing them and wore them ever since, because it's true, they don't show the dirt. They don't show. It's just another spot, you know, if you get an oil spot. (laughs) It's just another spot.
Underhill: A smart idea!
Clark: So I've wore it ever since. Of course then I. . . . Then I had a cameraman come from Salt Lake and he said, "Georgie, you ought to have a flag, so I brought you one." And he had bought a leopard skin square and he put it up, as a flag. So then I've been having the flag ever since. So everything came about mostly because of somebody. I mean, it was because something happened. In the old days, you put everything on the ground, because when you had camped so high, you didn't have level ground, and you had to fit stoves in between rocks to be safe. You couldn't have used a table on that. And then the same, whatever you eat you had to have on the ground, because you're on the slant. In high water you didn't have no level ground. People don't understand this. In the really high water, you didn't have.-because when it dropped and it would start dropping silt down lower would be where the camps were, even if you wanted so water came up. So then you had. . . . I was going through a department store one day and they had the kids' wading pools with just the two blow ups. And I thought, "Hmm, they're always kicking dirt in on that tarp and stuff rolls off of it and you can't have a table." And I got the wading pools, and just the small one and I could carry an extra one. You could blow them up. Worked perfect. So then I really used that, clear up until about ten, eleven years ago. Everybody got such a kick out of it, they'd have a party at home, they'd have a wading pool and put stuff in it. So I thought it was okay, you know. But then the Park Service said, "Hey, we say everybody is the same. You can't be the pioneer anymore, you have to have a table." We know the food's okay now, because I had to switch and have fresh meat and salad. But I still wanted to, because on our steaks and all, I thought, "I don't want paper plates and all." So people'd say, I'd say, "Just bring a spoon." "How you going to eat a steak with a spoon?" And I'll tell them, even yet, "You'll see." Because we have tortillas, and we get them without bones or without any fat and then you just put them on a tortilla and that's it. And the same on pork chops. They had the skinless and boneless chicken the same with the chicken. So we just use tortillas for everything and we don't have no paper plates. (laughs) So it works real fine. (laughs)
Underhill: Do you still serve the blackberry brandy?
Clark: Oh, yeah! I liked the liqueur to begin with. It was more expensive than brandy, but there is a difference in the taste. But then when they got the computers on in the market, then it didn't sell so good because it was about three dollars and fifty cents more a bottle. So then they quit making it. So now unless you buy it from France or Mexico or something, you can't get it. So then I get the brandy instead. But I still get a present because when they give me the big birthday party over at Hatch's, then Hatch give me a whole case, and I couldn't figure where he got it. He got it from France.-the liqueur.
Underhill: And this was your eightieth birthday party in 1990 at the Hatch warehouse?
Clark: Yeah. I give him a whole case of it. So, boy, did I treasure that and took it on the river and just had so many, one per trip or two per trip, and everybody was really.-the oldtimers were really looking for it, because, you know, they can't hardly get it.
Underhill: I've heard that there's some River Rat songs. Can you sing any of the River Rat songs?
Clark: I don't remember them, now. No, I don't. Well, we had just the one that we sing to everybody, which is not much of a song, that goes, "I'm a river rat, you're a river rat, we're all a river rat, and when we get together we like to sing our song." And then it just goes, "Yak, yak, yak," and you clap your hands, and "yak, yak, yak," about four times. And people like that action, to clap with their hands. And then you give a loud yell, "Yah!" to everybody going by you. So we still do that when we go by anybody in the Canyon, even though we're earlier than they are, because we're on the river at seven, we camp earlier than they do by far, but we also go earlier. And this is better, because you get into canyons you want, you get the camp you want, and everything. And it just works better. And so that's how we do it, and we go by them and they haven't quite had their breakfast yet. And then we give them this song, this "yak, yak, yak." We make sure that we have that, because they can hear that. And if there's rapids, they might not hear the other. And that, you know, then that cheers, and give that to everybody going down the river. (laughs) Until they get to where they almost give it back to us, if they happen to see us again. And it makes for a lot of fun.
Underhill: Speaking of fun, what sort of practical jokes have been played on some of your trips? Do you remember some?
Clark: Oh, we used to have a lot of different things that we would do that varied a whole lot. Oh, it just kind of goes according to the group you have and all this kind of thing.
Underhill: Any one in particular stand out in your mind.-either that you played or someone played on you?
Clark: No, not particularly. . . . They didn't play as much on me, oddly enough. Somehow I was always working. Between the motor and the kitchen.-and I still handle the kitchen and everything, setting it up. And I handle the big group and give the others the little group. So actually, I'm always working on the river. I'm with the people, but I am the working one.-we'll put it this way.-on everything, so that I'm still at work when you do different things all the time. We still have always a birthday party, but now we put it down to one night, because they're shortening our days to where we don't have the days we used to. And a lot of people write if they have a birthday and let us know if they want to have a party. [END TAPE 1, SIDE B] 33
[Begin Tape 2, Side A]
Clark: And then if they do that, we try to give them a tee shirt and then we make them think they're going in the river, but then we don't usually do that, because now people wouldn't like it quite as well. They're not quite as rugged.-as I put it.-they're not quite like they used to be. (laughs) They're not quite as tough as they used to be. So you don't do that. You make them think they're going, but they don't. You have people stand and then you collect crazy presents for them, from everybody and it's all wrapped up. And then they go and they undo their presents. Of course they just get everything.-sometimes good, sometimes bad. But this is where people have to have it, because they don't bring nothing special.-and they get all kinds of crazy stuff, believe it or not. You can't believe what sometime comes out of that bag. (laughs)
Underhill: Do you remember any of the things in particular? Or any of the presents?
Underhill: Oh, just different things sometimes, you know. Amazing things come out of that bag at times. So it was quite amazing. So after that we blindfold them and then we run them through a line. Everybody stands with their legs apart, far up the sand. We try to have a real sand beach and then we tell them, "Well we're sorry we have to put you in the water." And as they go through, everybody whacks them one. And then we have a guard to go along to be sure that they don't try to get out. And then the last person on the bottom, they have them put just a little water on the bottom part of them.-depends what time it is, so they don't get cold, but not to get their hair or anything wet.-and make them think they're going in the water. Then we take their blindfold off and then usually sing them a song, a birthday [song]. I usually have people along, a lot of the boatmen are good at singing and this type thing, to sing.-give them a song and all that, and all that type thing. So they all like it.-birthday. Then I even have a lot of people on honeymoons that write. And they write because they do want a party. I'll say, "Now, do you or don't you? Because you don't even mention it if you don't want one. You don't even let anybody know." But they do, so. . . . So that we do have one spot.-we have one good camp.-and we have the party there and make it all-in-one as to what they have.
Underhill: What other kinds of things do you do in camp in the evening?
Clark: Well, you always talk about where you've been, what you're going to do tomorrow and all these different things, so that they do know before Crystal and about hanging on. I usually tell people anyway on the boat, exactly how we're going into it, so they know it's not by accident, because no other boats go there. So then when I go right over by the wall and right into the big water, that they don't get frightened, that they know it is.-that I'm there because I want to be there (laughs), that that's where we go, and this type thing. So we do that. Then you have the hikes and all. And the fellow who is coming tonight to listen in tomorrow on the meeting.-he's [Al Korber] a very good geologist. And he isn't boring: He puts a lot of life into it and a lot of Indian stories and adds a little junk, you know, to make it interesting, and this kind of thing, so that he's not boring. Because I've had a few professors out from college and sometimes they're too much to the book, and then it's just don't give any interest. You know, just doesn't get the interest. And you have to do this at the right time, also. If you do it at the middle of the day or when you see things, if you tell formations as you see them, it's of interest. But on my people, at least, you're not going to sit them down at night and talk something dry and think they're going to sit up and listen, because they're going to go to sleep or go to bed. So if you have something at least lively, okay. If you haven't.-forget it. Because, you know, then they'll talk in little groups. But you can't have a dry speech at night, because they, as I say, they get up early and they just will go to sleep or wander off.
Underhill: How did you come to use firemen as boatmen?
Clark: Well, in the early days, first of course, I rowed the boat, and then that was okay. And then I got other little.-and I had certain boatmen who later had a concession: Ron Smith was one of them and Dick [McCallum], who still lives over in Flagstaff. They were very good boatmen. They didn't particularly like people, so I always had to lead all the hikes, because they wouldn't stay with the people, but they were awfully good boatmen. Then when I went to the big boats, however, then I had to have somebody that got along on the little boats. Then I found that, believe it or not, there was a great jealousy in the old day, among ones on little boats, when you had one on each side and we didn't have a motor on little boats, they just rowed. And each one, somehow wanted to out-do the other one, and you have to work together, because when you have three boats, you both like one side or the other of the oar, and it has to be real coordination. So if they didn't get along, it was a disaster. So I had two firemen who were passengers who were captains down in L.A., and I said, "Oh, I'm having trouble. Now that I am running this big boat, I can't run little boats and I'm having.-I can see I'm going to have trouble on jealousy, just between the boatmen." I said, "It's something I never thought about," and I said, "because they have to coordinate, not each trying to be better than the other." So he said, "Why don't you try firemen?" He said, "Because they have to work together, they have to get along. On everything they do, it has to be together." He said, "We'll come up, I like them to keep in condition anyway," and he said, "We'll come up, and if you'll let us, why, we're inexperienced, but we know enough that we'll get by and we'll show you." So they did for a while. Then they are the ones who got other firemen. And I still have firemen. I have others too, but I have a lot of firemen, because they do get along, and they like people. They're used to talking, they have a lot of go, and of course they're trained physically. They have to pass a test every month. They always have medical CPR and everything else. See, very advanced, so they're literally just all set for you. (laughs) Real physical condition, and they have to have this and that or they can't be a fireman. Because particularly L.A. is very tough. They're not as tough in San Frisco [San Francisco] on them as they are in L.A., because I've had some of the San Frisco ones, but they're not as tough as the L.A. The L.A..-somehow they.-oh, they just are tougher on them.
Underhill: How would you describe your relationship with the boatmen over the years?
Underhill: Oh, it's always been good.-very good companionship and all that. I get along with them real well, so I have not really had that much clash. A few things you have to watch them on.-originally about not drinking when they were rowing or something too much, because even before the rules came out that they have now, because it was alright at night, but you didn't want it in the day. And they didn't drink when they were on the fire department, but then because they were out relaxing, like a vacation, then they tended sometimes, and even at night, to want too much. And so that was the only thing you had to watch them on quite a bit at first, and make them see your side, that they couldn't work in the fire department and drink, and while they were working it wasn't the thing.-at night, but not during the day, and then reasonable at night too. And so that was only one of the few things, you know. But there always was a little jealousy, a little bit, though, even.-I couldn't get outside of the L.A. Fire Department for a while, because when I tried to bring in the L.A. County firemen, believe it or not, there's a jealousy. Because in the L.A. firemen, they do not associate, normally, with the L.A. [ed: County] firemen. And you find this among rangers too, you know.-certain cliques of different sections do not get along so good. It's amazing. I didn't know there was so much jealousy in the world! (laughs) Having led my own life so much, I just didn't know it existed, because I never had any reason, of course.-having a different life, you know. Because of course I've always had a sort of a different life.
Underhill: What kind of a boss do you think you are? Are you strict or. . . ?
Clark: Well, they always say I run a tight ship, but (coughs) my own. But it's mainly in regard to hanging on and having people hang on, watching. And also the boatmen not to do what they don't want the people to do. I said, know when you show off, you do as you want the people to do. If I tell the people.-on the big boats, particularly.-you put a hand down, slide off.-you don't stand up there and jump off in the water, because there might be rocks under there and you don't do it either, because then they can't do it that way. And when you take hikes, you don't do what you don't want them to do. You're not out to show how good you are.-you're out just to lead them safely. So that's the only way that they call it "a tight ship," is because of that factor.
Underhill: Have you had boatwomen, as well as men?
Clark: I have some that help, and mostly in the kitchen. The ones that I've had, oddly enough, work at other jobs, so they're not looking. Authentically, they're not looking for anything, because they have other jobs they like and are with it.
Underhill: I found a lot of references in your scrapbook to Bambi. Was she a part of the crew, or was she a passenger? Do you remember a Bambi?
Clark: I'm trying to think now. (pause) I think she was a passenger, quite a few times.
Underhill: Okay. This was a while back.
Clark: I have a lot of repeat passengers go an awful lot of times. And a lot of my people are older now, can't go, and even yet have gone ten, fifteen times: Joe [Josef] Muench, who takes pictures for the Arizona Highway [ed: Arizona Highways magazine], has been with me fifteen times. I just seen him, in fact.-he's fixed me some more pictures. And then a whole lot like that. I have some Chicago.-still get to the boat show who are ninety-three. And I have one woman who's ninety-six who went with me time and time again. She went on the Cataract and the Glen. Her husband died, and I met her when her husband had died, and she always drove a little trailer for him even then, because he had heart trouble and he used to go out in the country, calling on them at their homes, so she could really drive. So she had this little trailer and she met somebody in a park and they said, "Oh, you've got to come and go on the Glen Canyon. I'm sure she.-at that time they knew I couldn't get passengers.-she'll have room. So she come up and went on the Glen. And then she proved it was just the thing for her. And she had to save.-not that she had a lot of money, because she was just on some kind of a pension or something.-and she would make beads and sell them and all this stuff. And so she had to work for it, but she was determined to pay for her way. And she went every so often. She'd save so much and go every year for many years. Then her grandkids went. And oddly enough, she has just terrific health. Then her children don't, though. This is strange to my way of thinking, because the one son got cancer and passed away. And then darned if the daughter didn't get it. This is when they were about thirty-five, forty years old. And I thought, "Wow!" But evidently, cancer comes from something that's not inherited. I don't know, but it must, because gee, she's got such health.
Underhill: Why do you think people keep coming back? It seems you have more repeats than a lot of other companies.
Clark: Well, we're more out. I don't have the real high prices the others do. And a lot of times, they ask me why, because we do have the fresh meat and the vegetables and all. So there's no difference in food. And then it's because we try to have more fun. I like more of a fun trip, because I even said right to the rangers, when they keep changing things and talking about wilderness trips and geology, and I'll say, "The only thing you leave out in anything is to have fun." You never heard the word "have fun, enjoy yourself".-all you hear is this wilderness, and I said, "It's not a wilderness, as such, any more. For America, now, it's still more than they get anywhere else, but is not wilderness, as such.-not when you have this many people that eat steak at night." (laughs) It's not wilderness. (laughs) So they're about ready to crown me with a brick, you know, because I'll say these things to them. You know, "between you and I," I said, "I don't tell people this." When I'm going down, I don't talk about the past to people, because they're paying for this trip and I want them to enjoy it. So I never talk about the past to people unless they ask me just something special. But I don't overplay it over the present. Because after all, you know, they're having this trip and paying money for it and I'm not about to down it from what was.
Underhill: In the early years you did the "Share the Expense" plan. How did that come about?
Clark: Oh, I did for years, up until the Dam [Glen Canyon] come in, because people didn't go. They just didn't go. And so it was, because I sold real estate in the winter.-had a real estate license.-I said I could work at everything.-and I sold real estate for quite a while. Even when I went to Ferry Command I was selling real estate. Then my sister took over, because she had a license too. And I just went back to it when I come back out again, because it was, I found, even then, was a good thing to have a license on. So then there was this "We Share the Expense." Then I'd sell real estate, I'd keep talking river trips (laughs) along with it, you know, trying to get people. Because you couldn't get enough.-it was anything but. And then when I'd go to all these other countries at that time.-because I went up to Alaska three years before it was a state, and up to the Northwest Territory, and all these places, before anybody went on rivers. In Mexico a lot when nobody went. A whole lot in Mexico. And then down in Guatemala. And just twice down to South America, because I didn't care for it so much. But you had to just have a share, or nobody didn't have nobody. And particularly when I had just the little boats, you just didn't have them.-clear up until, oh, clear 'til the Dam was starting to build. Then suddenly it become popular, it got lots of advertising, people aren't going to be able to go.-then all of a sudden Glen Canyon and everything got real popular. And then you could make a living at it. Then the government stepped in and then it become a concession of the Grand Canyon. And then, of course, everything kept changing. Then you got your droughts, which you never had in the old day, as I said. You only had droughts two years.-in 1952 or 1953, I think it was, that you had a drought. And all the time in the old days, you always run ninety thousand [cubic feet per second]. Seventy, eighty, ninety was common. And now and then a hundred and twenty-five thousand [cfs].
Underhill: How did you feel about the building of Glen Canyon Dam, and how do you feel now?
Clark: Well, because there's so many people.-being as they change, and so many people actually like the Dam. They enjoy going up on Lake Powell. So if you're taking a percentage of people, then the Dam is for them, you know, because they like that type thing. And then as long as you're going to have more people, because they don't have anything or birth control then, and you get so many children, then when they let everybody come in the country come in, you get more and more people.-Las Vegas is a good example, because they still have five, six thousand every month come in. And I've been there twenty years, and boy, it's changed like you've never seen, and so then there's a shortage of everything. The water is a lot higher and you can't use it only at certain times, the electric and all this stuff.-they're getting lots of problems because of the population. So as long as they're going to have a population boom, you're going to have to have, and you have to look at it as such, you're going to get power from somewhere.-you're either going to have dams, power plants, or something.-you don't want any of them, but it's the way it's going to be, because nobody is going back to live primitive, you know.-even mildly so any more, because they're used to it there.- used to getting everything they want.
Underhill: How did you feel about it when they were starting. . . ?
Clark: Oh, I was just glad that I had it for so many years. Because I had had it, you know, all of us share the expense, yet I had it to myself for twenty-five years. And all the other rivers, too, remember. So I was just getting by, not saving any money, but I was having a good old time, as far as I was concerned. Then particularly after my daughter was killed, then my mother the same way was killed, so then it was only me, so what's the difference. You know, I could take the chance. As I said, I was not one that worried too much, because you didn't have insurance or nothing. I just went, and that was that. I didn't worry about it. I just went and took the shot and spent whatever I had for boats. . . . And of course I'm real glad I did, because you'll never do it again. And you certainly couldn't do nothing over, because it isn't there (laughs) and that's anywhere. You know, there's dams everywhere.-Mexico and everywhere now. And you couldn't do it over again, and not for what I liked. When I first seen the Grand and went swimming, it had everything I wanted: It was beautiful beyond words, like nothing I'd ever dreamed of; and it was wild; and at the same time you had the parts that was peaceable and the beautiful beaches; and last but not least, there's no mosquitos. (laughs) Well, that's a big deal when you're living out all the time, you know, that you don't have to always be slapping at mosquitos, because you have them everywhere else. You have them in Mexico, you have them almost everywhere. Certain times of the year, you can't run around like you do in the Grand Canyon. And on the Grand, it's still quite good today. You have a few flies or something.-you get close to Phantom [Ranch] or something, but not a whole lot. But not like others, and at least you don't have the mosquitos until you get, oh, way further down towards the lake you might get a few, but not as bad as other rivers, even so.
Underhill: It sounds like when you first saw it, you fell in love with it.
Clark: I said I was going to be there forever. I made the statement to my family, "I found what I want," which was true. It was what I had been looking for. I was looking.-as I said, I was restless.-I looked for something, I didn't know what, and I found what I wanted, because it did, it was always changing, remember, and when the water came up, and when it went down, it always put the silt in different spots. And it took years to know the Canyon, because when you went on different water levels, everything was so different, it was like you'd never been there. And you had to learn to look real high at canyons to have any idea where you were. And the speed was so great, and on the water you didn't have the slow water like now. The speed was so great without a motor or anything, you know. And the motor on the three big boats is mainly for steerage to get into shore and this type thing. And even on the big three boats yet, it's hard to run, and you don't have the power like the other boats, at all. And that's why other people don't run it, because it is difficult to run.-you have to go with the water. So you actually are crossed between a motor and a little boat having oars, only you don't have as much control as it does. So you do have to know what you're doing to run the big three boats yet, because there's some spots so tight that all river runners, and they come to Bedrock and this real low water, and the day I run it, is always real low water, and I just got to know how to do it. But otherwise, they always say, "I'd sure like to watch you run Bedrock, because I don't know how on earth you can ever get a thing like that through." (laughs) And I said [to Matt], "Well, I don't want you watching me, because you might bother me." and you might take away my concentration on how I'm doing it."
Underhill: Now why do you just "shoot" the rapids? You don't stop usually to look and contemplate....
Clark: Oh, I don't like to stop and look. I never did stop and look at rapids. I always thought I could do better from the middle of the rapid to know where I want to go, and I know the motor's okay, and I know that everything is going beautiful . . . and if I'm going. But if you pull in and people get off and on, they might drop a string, it might get in the motor. You're just not settled in, where if you go right into the rapid when you come down, and you can (coughs) if you watch, you can maneuver just as good right from the middle of the rapids you decide where you're going to go, and it works a lot better. I never did stop and look a rapid over anywhere, because I just don't like that way of doing it, because I like the instant decision better, and you have to have positive decision. You can't think, "I ought to go here, no I ought to go there," because this wouldn't work! (laughs) You'd be in great trouble with those three boats like that, because you haven't got power. Now with the single boats you've got enough power that you could change your mind and run up some and back over.-particularly now when you don't have much water. But you can't do it when you don't have that power.
Underhill: What kind of people went down with you initially? And are there different people now than there were twenty-five years ago?
Clark: Well, originally, for all they were professional people, oddly enough. Most were professional, but they had a pioneering spirit and they were repeaters, and they went and went. And they were fabulous, and they're still my friends today. They're still my friends today.-I see some of them, they're older, they can't go for various health reasons, and a lot of them, of course, are gone, because you go along and so many have left. But they had the pioneer spirit. And then there was no complaints of any kind, because they just had that. And a lot of the times, older people even have that, because they still retain that being used to everything. And so that is what makes the difference. But to me.-you was asking how I felt about the dams.-well, I feel lucky I had it, mainly. And with the world changing for the population, why, that's how it's going to be. I'm surprised that more don't look at it that way, because I tell them, until they get birth control, why, you can't change things. When they're talking conservation and everything, they never mention less people, getting birth control. There's just so many people, and if you're going to get more, why, that's how it's going to be. (laughs)
Underhill: I think we need to take a break now for the audio, so we'll stop for just a moment and see what we're doing. (pause) You mentioned that you've done a lot of television appearances. Can you describe some of those for us?
Clark: Most have been a lot of fun. Originally, you know, I took a lot of film. And I took on every trip. And so then I go to these shows.-but even then, they like rapids. So I cut all the rapids out. Rapids I didn't have left. And they weren't interested in the terrific beauty that you had, and some of them were a little rough at first, but I'm very lucky because there weren't other people that had them. So I got on the very first black and white pictures, on Bold Adventure, and then I got on a lot of different things later, and a lot of short talk shows and all this type of thing, because it was something that nobody knew about, and it was real good to get on that, so I was very lucky about that. So I had an awful lot of film.-I gave it to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. And I gave them twenty-nine rolls of two thousand feet. (laughs) But the only thing, they didn't have a lot of was the rapids, because I couldn't afford to have them copied and I used the rapids up at that time. I kept a real good copy of rapids, however, before you didn't have enough water to run Crystal real good, where you had the real high water. So I have probably the best pictures, and I will try to get you a copy of them. They're really good rapids on Crystal, because I still kept those, and I can still get them on video and everything. They don't show as good on video as when you've got the big screen is where they show.-a ten by twelve.-they look terrific. The one I remember, though, is Fox Movietone went down.-you know, they used to do twenty-one minutes. And so they went down with me just before the dam, believe it or not, and ninety-thousand.-they wanted to tape the last run, and they did. And we went down it and so then just at Hermit, which has big waves, but no rocks, and I kept telling the one fellow.-they had two cameras.-and I kept telling the one, "You have to sit down on this, because the waves are big. There's no rock and we're not going to hit rock, but it is such big waves, you no way." And they had the great big cameras in those days that they carried on their chests and had a strap around it and a quick release on it. And so come what may, he wanted to shoot, he got so excited, and he partially stood up and then he got swept off. (laughs) Then the other fellow was taking pictures and he took a picture of him! And this was what I didn't want, was bad publicity by going off.-it's what I didn't want at all, you know. But there it is, you know. And so anyhow, we got him back on, but he lost the camera, because then he had to press that quick release. And he lost the camera, but they took it as it was. He said, "Well, you told me!" And so that's how it went. And so then they had the film on. Then they had it in all the big theaters at that time. So then I just got to Chicago, and I was on this summer run or whatever you called it then, so I just got to Chicago and they had it on this theater. So I said, "Oh, good, there's some River Rats. Just go in and don't say a word to anybody," because nobody knew about it. Let's just sit behind some people and be quiet, so they don't know that you was on it, because some of the people have been on it. So then they show this and he shows a lot of the rapids. Then of course he shows this guy going off. (laughs) And this big voice.-which was what I didn't want.-but anyhow, they loved it.-since they had the picture of it.-and so there it was, you know. And so the people in front, it was what they were saying, you know, that I didn't want the people.-that I kept trying to keep them giggling here.-because they'd say, "Oh, them people are crazy to go do a thing like them. They're absolutely nuts. They must want to commit suicide." (laughs) And their remarks, you know, were everything but good, you know, about anyone that would do such a thing.
Underhill: Have you ever thought you were crazy?
Clark: And of course this was what Fox liked. They got that, one of the cameramen.-they said it was almost worth losing the camera, and since we picked him up alright, why. . . . And I said, "Well, it wasn't the kind of advertisement I wanted." But anyhow, there it was, you know. So sometimes things like that do happen, that you don't want. And it just happens.
Underhill: You mentioned people thinking that someone who did that must be suicidal or crazy, and I know some people in your book, you said, have called you "The Crazy Woman on the River."
Clark: Oh, when I first went, because I had swam, mainly. And I went clear down to Temple Water, then, when I started the boat trips. So then when I first started a lone, single, ten-man boat, and then you had everything there and all, when I would come in, and then even when I got to the big boats, I went down Temple Bar, clear up beyond when the concession come in, and they said, "Oh, here comes that crazy woman!" (laughs) You know, at first when it wasn't heard of. And I understand, It didn't bother me a bit.-as I said, nothing ever bothered me, and I just laughed and say, "Oh, it helps, you know," something like that, and just laugh, you know, at the same time. So they never bugged me an inch. Then of course I could laugh at them when it become suddenly the thing to do, you know.-and so popular, because then I had started the whole thing, really, so I could laugh at them at that time. But oh, for the years you took that! And then a lot of people.-I was up here.-I hadn't been to the South Rim. When I first run, I'd never been up here at the Canyon at all, for years. So then we used to stop at Copper Blossom there, and the men would go upstream and the women down, and we could strip off then without the bathing suits and get washed up good. And we paid no attention, went back. But I didn't realize that out at Desert View they had those binoculars, even then. And when I went over there and I looked through those binoculars, boy, you could see like nothing! I mean, right down to the beach in them. I couldn't believe it and I said, "Oh my God, we've been (laughs) going separate ways and washing up nude down there!" (laughs) And I had no idea! So I had no idea of anything at all. Nothing had ever got to me. And so there it was, you know. So we didn't do that no more, that was for sure! So I was so shocked when I found that there was binoculars that could actually. . . . And then the first time I took this Dan Davis down, that was in this.-anyhow, I took him down. And so then we picked him up, he hiked down the Tanner Trail. So we picked him up down at the bottom of it, and he got in and he said.-this was just nobody was going, and I wanted a ranger so he'd know something about it, that they wouldn't tell these crazy tales at campfire.-so then he said, "Anything happen?" And of course I wanted everything to look good, and nothing had happened, "Oh no, not a thing." Well then the first shot.-and this is (coughs) what happened is going around in the rapid at that time, is that, got right into the rapid, and then a fellow was bailing the boat.-we still had bottoms on them then.-and he was standing down, and he didn't hang on, and he got pitched off and he hung on the ropes and we hauled him back up. And then I sheared a pin.-they used to have pins on a motor.-and then I had to change a pin. Then we landed for lunch, and then we took the lunch bag and hiked up a ways to sit down.-and we were all together at that time, there was not that big a group.-and then here's a rattlesnake. (laughs) And this is happening like "bing, bing, bing," you know. He looked up at me and said, "Did you say nothing happened?!" (laughs) I couldn't convince him that nothing had happened the whole way down until he'd gotten there.-because he was only going to Phantom [Ranch]. And I had hoped, you know, nothing like this would occur until we got to Phantom. [END TAPE 2, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]
Clark: Then for some unknown reason, here it is, you know, like when you're trying so hard to get good publicity and never have nothing, then this is the way it goes, you know. You had a hard time making him believe otherwise. And he went with me and rowed as a boatman in the little boats for quite a long time afterwards. And so then he eventually had medical problems, and then he went to Omaha to set up parks, and then he came back, and then he retired an early retirement, then he went down to Tucson and he worked in that living museum [Sonora Desert Museum] weekends. Then the fellow retired who run it and then he's in a full-time job down there now. And this interview was later when they asked him about going in the Canyon and a few things. Then he took notes for me and in hiking and all, escape routes. And that's where they came from, the original escape routes [see NAU manuscript collection #270 for a copy of Davis' 1955 "Escape Routes" from the Grand Canyon], was between this, and my brother gave me a lot of notes beside.-was from all of us getting in on it, was where they originally come from. But again another time.-remember I'm trying to get good publicity, in the old day.-and I had some fellows: I was using Johnson Motors and I had the paper from L.A., and oh boy, I had quite a few that managed (coughed) they managed to get them together, so they're coming down, going to be good publicity. So everything was going beautiful and having no problems, actually, at all. So then I'm down below after we go through Upset, and thought nothing about Upset, this was when we had big, little boats. I'm waiting on the cliff down below for them, they don't come and they don't, and I thought, "I can't imagine what happens," because nothing ever happens there, smooth water outside of Upset. And they come in.-sure enough, one boat had gone on top of the other one, you know, and this kind of thing, and a couple of fellows had went off, and oh boy! And they had to fish them out and just all this and that. So we went ahead. But then the stories that they made, it showed, because the fellow didn't have the pictures, and when he got down into the Los Angeles.-I forget which paper it was .-the Herald Examiner, or one of them.-and then this was a really big setting: He had an artist draw from his memory the little boats. Then he had a guy flying in the air out into the rapids and all these things, you know! One boat on top of the other one! There shot my, you know, trying to get people, because people were afraid already: They weren't going to go with you! So there shot that good publicity. You couldn't win for losing when you took anybody! If I just had pictures of my own (stumbles) oh, that was allright, but if you took anybody, somehow you could sure. . . . Not too long ago, and that hasn't been about six years ago, I had a fellow from U.S. or something like that, News magazine. It was just going to be a little short piece like they have. But anyhow, and then that was fine.-and so nothing happened that was bad on it, but we come to Crystal. So then at that time, the water was high enough that I didn't run the motor through. I run the motor through now, because the water's so low you have to. But then at that time, they first started having plastic instead of having steel in the back of the motor that holds the cords for the starter pull. And so sometimes at first, those things would wear out when you had them on so many trips. Then they just wouldn't start, and that was that until you replaced them. So I knew what it was, but I hoped not to have it. So anyhow I went down, so this was when you pulled the motor up to go through Crystal, when you had higher water, because you didn't worry about rocks, and you could just go through. So I pulled the motor up, everything's beautiful, and I put the motor down, I pull it.-not a thing, just as dead as a door nail. And I said, "Oh-oh!" Because I'd had it on quite a lot of trips. I knew right now what it was. There was not one burp, even! (laughs) And I knew what it was. So I just started talking real fast and I said, "Oh, the motor's a little stubborn." I said, "Just like the old day. We'll just go ahead and float a trip, because you had a lot of potluck. We'll just call it potluck," and I just kept talking real fast, you know. And then down below here you had a real bad rapid, called tuna. Then down below that you had a great big rock in the middle and I said, "Oh, it's allright. When we come to that rock, if we get on, I can get off. I've been there before." (laughs) I'm talking so fast and I'm wondering what's going to happen on this rock, you know. I'm thinking about this big rock, "Oh boy, I'm probably going to straddle this thing." So then I come, and then a rock bumped my rear end just right and whipped that boat around and we run around that better than I could have run it! (laughs) Better than I could have run it, you know! And I said, "See, this boat don't even need me!" Talking to the people, you know, and laughing and everything, having a good time, you know. And then we got down further and I said to the boatmen, "Oh, it's okay, you can change the motor now." (laughs) But I was sure talking! So later he said, "You were talking fast there. You didn't have it that way in the old day. I noticed, you know." And I said, "Well, that's the way we did have it." He said, "I don't doubt it, but you know what, do you mind if I call you a 'chunk of granite'?" (laughs) I had some crazy hat on and he said, "I'm going to call you a chunk of granite with a crazy hat on, because you started covering real quick. You weren't disturbed, but you wanted to get the people not disturbed, so you started talking real fast." So that's just what he did in that article. "The captain of this ship is like a chunk of granite with a crazy hat on." (laughs) And I thought it would happen again. It wasn't bad luck, but not just the way I wanted it. I wanted it to go like it usually did.-you popped the motor and it went.
Underhill: You started to tell us while the audio [tape] was being replaced what happened on the Groucho Marx Show.
Clark: Oh, that on Groucho Marx, because I knew I shouldn't be on it, because I always had film, and then I could talk good with film because I had something to talk about. People knew what I was talking about, because in the old day they didn't really know what you were talking about. They just knew water, but they had no idea. So here I couldn't have film, and I didn't want him to talk on the Grand, because as you know, he mainly wanted to bring up something with sex or this or that. And I could see I couldn't convince him that there were no big sex deals on the Grand. At that time it was too serious and too much rapid and just too much everything. I said, "Well, I'm going to Mexico. You can talk on Mexico instead, because I don't get people there anyhow to share the expense, but normally we don't have them, and so that I'm not trying to build that to get people." "Okay, we'll talk on Mexico." So then we're going through and I'm showing him a brochure, which is real rugged at the time, because I told the fact that we do have alligators and that you do have snakes in the trees and it does rain.-this makes your camps like mud, real sticky mud, because it was the truth. Because there was no use going if you couldn't take it, because you'd go to see the country, and that's the way it is. And you go in August, because it rains to have enough water to go. So I was putting it hard and flat, because I didn't want anybody to go thinking they were going to be on anything but a tough trip, because they were tough. And so then he's reading this to the people (laughs) and laughing about it at the time. And so then he goes along talking, building up like he does and everything, and so then he was saying, "Well, I don't know, Georgie," he said, "if I go on that trip, you know, I think it would be cheaper if you'd be sure and take a couple of undertakers along, because evidently going to get somebody killed on there." And I had just picked up two people, adventurers, were not my trip, up on the Cataract, who had got drownded [ed: drowned], and I had buried the bodies up there and walked away. And I was real serious thinking about burying these bodies and I said, "Oh no, I shouldn't have said this," but I was thinking of them, I said, real serious, remember, I'm real serious-faced, and you've got an audience out here, and I said, "Oh no, you just carry a shovel and bury them on the spot." (laughs) And of course they roared! And everybody always remembered it.-and this is going across country.-and everybody always remembered just those words, "You carry a shovel and bury them on the spot." (laughs) Just what I shouldn't have said! (laughs) But I'm thinking about those on the Cataract, which is what we did.
Underhill: Have you actually ever lost anybody on your trips? Has anybody died while they were with you?
Clark: Heart failure.
Underhill: Heart failure?
Clark: Uh-huh.
Underhill: Do you know how many people have had heart attacks while they were with you?
Clark: No, just the one had a heart attack. Well, I knew that they had a heart problem. Now, on passengers, if I can help it, I don't take them if they've had very much heart problem. But some will go anyhow, and then tell you when they get through, they've had by-pass, and think it's funny. So I said, "Well, it isn't just your trip, but it spoils the other people's trip, is the problem." So now I tell them, "You spoil other people's trip. If you're going to die, you're going to die anyway, maybe," because as I tell you, you can't get help there that quick. "But you ruin everybody else's trip." And on my trips I have a lot of working people, where their money doesn't come that easy, because I do take the working, being cheaper, I apply for a lot of the working people, and that "you're ruining their trip, because then it's not the same if anything happens." And maybe you don't care, but it's bad for them. And so that's the way I put it now to everybody. But still you will have some that will go and then tell you at the bottom. You know, laugh and say, "Oh, I had by-pass, but I knew I could do it." And I tell them the same thing, "If you didn't read it," because as I've told them when we talk, it isn't you, it's the fact that you spoiled it for anybody else, because I know I've had it, and it just isn't good. And that's the way that one is.
Underhill: How common are injuries of a semi-serious nature, like a broken bone or that kind of thing? I know some people will get a cut and think it's horrible, but more serious injuries.
Clark: I haven't had a lot, thank goodness. But mainly, on my boats, you don't have frames, so then you just are not apt to have anything. And on the single boat, I have one boat that is the long boat and two tubes, but it also is a tie. And we travel together, and then we manage without having all that frame. So our boats are safer because we don't have frames. Only stuff soft, so in big rapids, you only have a soft boat and everything's in rubber bags. There's no metal. But in my frame boat, like everybody else has, then when you have a frame boat, then you have to go around the rapids carefully, because if you get in too big a wave and you get a bounce, and then your hand hits on a frame, even your hand, then, you can do something to it, or your arm. So then your frames.-and everybody knows that, is that you have to then not go where it's so rough, because if you do, you're apt to have somebody who will let go or do something and hit their hands on the frame, because it isn't soft. And so it's my frame boats that I can worry on. I've been very lucky on it, but it's the one, if any. I wouldn't worry about mine at all, actually. And I don't worry about the single.-and this fellow here tonight [Al] is the one that runs it, mainly, because he can go all the time. He's semi-retired, he's young, but . . . is anyhow, and he's very good, so that he's real good and very conscious on being it, and he just loves it, because it doesn't have it. But on a frame, but you have to, if they do all this cooking, aluminum and all, and they have to have a place to carry everything. So on a single boat you can't do it, unless you have all this. And beyond that, it's good, but you just cannot hit through things, you've got to go around every hole. Any holes of any size, you don't aim for them. I wouldn't be able to run that boat, probably, because all my life I have run for the big stuff, and I automatically would probably be heading for the big stuff. (laughs) I could run the other single, with a frame, uh with a string, but not that frame boat, because I just haven't ever had to do this sort of thing.
Underhill: What's the most serious accident that you've ever had on the river? Or have you had any?
Clark: No, not bad, as far as anything goes with arm or leg or anything. Got cut on the head a few.-got cut on the head on the frame boat, since the dam usually has been the most, but that's been it and outside of heart attacks. Had the heart attack. But been real lucky. But I preach safety an awful lot all the time, on it, but mainly just caution on everything.-but particularly the frame boat. And in a way, my running the big boat which goes through the rapids is sort of bad, in a way, to have the other boats even near me, because then they shouldn't see me at all, because then they, even to the boatmen, really wants to go where I go.-and particularly if the people say, "Well, why can't we go there?" It's hard to explain to them the difference in boats, and other companies very carefully don't stop.-if they know I'm going through Lava. They stop to look it over, but they plan it so, and say so, because they prefer not to have their people, naturally, watch me go through when they can't go through. They have to go to the right, and then to the lesser part of it. And I can understand that carefully, because I have the boats too that the same way, so we've got more now, instead of taking pictures, I can take it with the single boat (stutters) string, but not with the frame boat. I prefer to keep him where they don't see me. Then there's no question.
Underhill: On the Grig, do you still stand up all the way down?
Clark: Oh, yeah, I have to stand, with my motor. It's set up that way. But then, I'm used to it, and I have never got thrown out and I know exactly how to brace and how to get down. And Georgie takes good care of Georgie (laughs) or I wouldn't have survived all these years. Because remember when I first hiked and all, nobody knew anything about nothing, and I had a lot of time and did a lot of those long, long hikes with Harry Aleson, a hundred eighty miles and all. Then later we got to using the crepe paper and marking so we'd know where to get back down: if you'd get up and you couldn't get over a cliff, that you could back down, and be safe to do it, and pick up the paper as you went. And those little short crepe papers hang on to anything.-two, three inches wide. Miners use them all the time. My brother put me onto that, because he used to have a hobby.-he was an engineer liking to going out and follow some prospectors to these mines and things.-and they had used crepe paper clear back. And so he told me, "Always take it with you. When you have any doubts about getting back when you can't go forward, then you can always come back." So, boy, I used it alot, because I am the one who put most of the trails, originally, in the Grand. See, they weren't there, because Powell only had one and a half trips and so all the other times did, and I was the only one on the Grand going all the time and taking people for all them years. So I promptly, when I found a place away that I liked to get in, started beating a trail into it, and then I went the same way, and I used to mark it then and leave the papers, so we'd be sure and go the same way, until I could get a trail I could see in. And if anything at all so that we'd get back on the same trail, because most of those trails originally, from the river, and Deer Creek and that, are my trails. And the Park Service changed just the bottom part of Deer Creek recently to make it shorter, because a lot were coming up over the rocks, and that's why they did it, just on the bottom part.
Underhill: I have one last question before we stop for today, and let you have some dinner: Nevills talked about the fact that you're a woman, and he didn't maybe like women running, the river and you mentioned in your book that some of the newspapermen didn't want to cover you because you were a woman and if you'd been a man, they might have covered the story.-how much discrimination did you encounter through the years, being a woman river runner.
Clark: Well, at first, a lot. Well, they just didn't want a woman on the river to begin with. Even on your news reporters and all a little bit at first, a few of them just didn't want to report it. And then it was a woman down.-Laura.-can't think of her last name now.-that was down in Boulder City, and she was a newswoman and she put it on like nothing. She got it on network and all. And they didn't have that trouble, oddly enough, when TV come out, with the first ones even, didn't have that problem. But it was just on some places that couldn't believe it, didn't want to believe it, and just didn't think it was possible when you first talked. And before the dam was in, we must have just known about, they'd look at you like you were crazy, you know, because one time on a plane.-people, we did then, I was on a plane and I was looking down at the Grand Canyon, a woman said, "You're sure interested." And I said, "I should be, I have boats down there." This was before they'd ever heard of them and she looked at me like I was crazy. Then I noticed she didn't talk to me the rest of the trip, so I didn't bother her either. But you had this. And even when I was up here that first time, I started to say, I was out when I was at that Desert View, and somebody was looking at a map and saying, "Oh that point down there, such and such," and I said, "Well, that's Copper Blossom." "How do you know?" And I said, "Because I'm running boat trips down there." And they looked at one another and walked silently away. (laughs) So you got this! Yeah, you got this. And so a lot, too, would think, "You must be dreaming or something." You know at first it was hard to get on, that was the only thing. And I normally didn't pay any attention, because I could see they didn't figure it and didn't know, and they just didn't about it then. And I could see where they was that way, so it didn't bother me any.
Underhill: Have you had any problem over the years with other river runners? Or is that a different sort of group?
Clark: When they first come on, a little bit at first, and they would be somewhat jealous and all this and that, but not since. Oddly enough, over time, it's just the opposite.-I'm friends with almost all of them, and you don't have that in the extreme. Now they just talk about you, "The Old-timer," and that you started all this. And you don't find it in the young ones today like you did originally when a few of the first come on, of you just being there. So now, somehow, they accept it and just point it out and don't seem to mind, you know, the fact.-they just say you're, you know, a living pioneer, and that's the end of it. So they don't seem to mind, and all over there, so I'm good friends with almost any of them, I get along and no problems at all. No, I just don't have any of those occurring. It was just that short time, and a few of the very beginning ones who then wanted to feel they were the only ones or something like this. But not when they come on, and they were just working for somebody. So they thought it was great when it started. So I don't have that at all, as far as they're concerned.
Underhill: I have to throw this one in there, for everybody else, for Laine and Chip, but we wondered, people have told us about you sitting in the Colorado River, and we wondered why you do that and how you're able to sit for so long in that cold water and take people out there with you.
Clark: Oh, because it's good to learn the cold water. It doesn't hurt you actually. And if you ever go off into it or anything, it's better if you're used to it. And then you warm up and you get used to going out into it. It isn't that cold. And you get to going out at noon or anything, it keeps you cool if it's hot at all. So then I start and get so many to go out with me, you know, to take their drink, or a Coke or whatever, just wade out and stand beside the boat. And for a while they timed us for a while. And women take, as you know, more cold than the men because of the way they're built, so women, particularly a lot of women get so they can.-and like it. I mean, not dislike it, but like it. And so it doesn't bother them. It takes men longer, because as they've said, normally it's something about their build and the way they're made that they can't take as much cold. But you do get some of them, even, that don't mind it at all. And it's better if you stay a little used to it. It's just in case you ever need to be used to it, it's a little better.
Underhill: What's the longest you've gone out and sat there, do you know?
Clark: oh I don't know, I don't pay any attention, because oddly enough my thermostat, I guess, works good, because the cold weather doesn't bother me when I go back to Chicago, yet, to a boat show, because I was there in the winter they had the temperature was eighty below with the wind chill factor. And that set the record for all time. And I know I didn't. . . . And I wasn't dressed like other people, because I didn't have boots lined and all, with the heavy lining. And I wasn't dressed as heavy as they are back there, because I was born there, but yet I didn't seem to be suffering as much as they did from the cold either. I mean, that didn't seem to be affecting me as much as it did them. And so then when I get in cold water it don't seem to affect me either, or the heat either one. I mean, in the Canyon I don't run for shade because the heat doesn't bother me. And the same in Las Vegas in the truck and all, because I don't have air conditioning in my warehouse, and I work in the summer and all and it's a hundred and seven, you know, you think nothing about it, because you're thinking about your work, for one thing, and wanting to get it done. And when I had those three days between, you've got to work real fast and hard to get it done. And so your concentration is real heavy on getting it done. Because I am the one who packs the groceries between and all yet, because I like to work. And I have no trouble, and pretty rare do I ever forget anything, because that is one you can't go to the grocery store for. (chuckles) So it's pretty rare, and if you're alone and can really concentrate. But the heat just doesn't bother me, but neither does the cold bother me. So as I said, my thermostat works good. (laughs) But I am very fortunate and I know it. I thank whatever it is every day.-my mother or whatever, I don't know.-but anyhow, for my good health all my life. Because I have to admit that I have never had a headache, and I do drink beer.-I drink beer at night, a couple of beers all the time.-and it's never given me a headache. I just haven't had a headache. I said, "I guess I don't have any brains or something," because I haven't had any. Maybe you have to have brains to have one. (chuckles) Because I never have, as my sister knows. I have never even taken an aspirin, because the first thing I've ever taken is when I went over, and then the dentist wanted me to take this antibiotic for that tooth that I now have that is allright, that he didn't want to pull. And I have never even taken an aspirin, and he knows that. "Well," he said, "this is not anything at all, so it won't bother you." So he coaxed me, wanting me to take it. And he said, "Oh, eventually it will heal up anyhow, but if you get any troubles over there, do it." But I haven't so far. I got the prescription, but I haven't taken it yet, because I have never taken any pills. I never ever took an aspirin, so somehow I just have the feeling I don't want to take any, you know, because I just think you're better off when you don't, particularly me, because I'm not used to anything. So I just think, "Hmm!" (laughs) I haven't taken one so far, I don't think I will yet, either. (laughs) So whatever it is, I thank goodness for, though. I feel so lucky.-when I look at people, when I even look at my boatmen, because a lot of the firemen, they get cancer and those things, forty, forty-five years old! I had one that passed away last year, and he was only around forty-two years old. And I can't understand why so many people are getting these things this day and age. You know, you didn't used to hear of them, or something. I don't know what happens this day and age. But I just thank goodness every time. I just say whatever it is, well, I'm glad. (laughs) You know, whatever it is, I'm just fortunate and glad both.-lucky.-and so I don't feel bad at all that I never aimed for money. I never have. My trips have been reasonable, I've always just got by, I'll still just get by.-particularly if I even get washed out now in the bid and all, why, I'll get by.-just have that confidence. That's the way it is. And it doesn't bother me, because now I'm constantly reminded in one way, that I'm still around because somebody will write and say, "Oh, I just found out you're still running the river." (laughs) You know, they lost contact with me. You know, something like this, "We're too old to go, but we want to have contact with you again, and that you're still running" or something else. You know, they'll be so surprised. So all the time once in a while you get these gentle reminders, you know, "Well, you're still living." Literally speaking, they'll just say, "Oh, you're still living," somebody younger, and I'll say, "Oh, you bet. I'm going to pack dirt in your face!" (laughs) Yeah, usually my return is, "I'm going to pack dirt in your face," is what I kid them about and then that quickly shuts them up and they'll say, "No. . . ." Then a few that know me will say, "You know, I don't doubt it!" A few fellows, particularly. They'll say, "With your health, I almost don't doubt it."
Underhill: Well we will stop here and we look forward to tomorrow morning. And we've really appreciated you sharing your thoughts and remembrances with us today, and we'll do Part Two tomorrow.
Clark: Good! [END TAPE 2, SIDE B]